Dark Days and the Beautiful Ladies Three

I have a confession. 

I'm not always happy.  I'm not always happy and my house gets messy.  I'm not always happy, my house gets messy and I lose my temper with my kids.  I'm not always happy, my house gets messy, I lose my temper with my kids and sometimes it gets really dark around here. 

To give a little context, earlier last year, the flurry of hospital stays, Dr.'s appointments, therapy sessions and nurse visits came to a sudden halt.  They began on February 26th, 2013 and ended on January 29th of 2015.  In the span of two years we'd spent a month in the hospital, had gone to 83 various Dr.'s appointments, had about 30 feeding therapy sessions in our home, and had had the home health nurse visit maybe 15 times or so.  I'd spent hours: hours working with, ordering and planning out the details of the new medical supplies our daughter relied upon; hours administering medications, measuring intake/outtake; hours caring for, fearing for, listening for and watching out for this one little one.  The older three danced around the circumference.

But then it stopped.  Her weight goals had been met.  Her heart was not in imminent crisis.  Her therapist proclaimed her a texture expert.  Her tubie was pulled...removed.  Nearly as quickly as it began, it ended. 

And it was wonderful!  We rejoiced in the answered prayers, in the health of our little one and in the hope for the future of our family.  We marveled that we'd come through it with the accolades of Annika's GI Dr:  "Congratulations to mom-dedicated mother of 2014."  Those words are the most precious award I've ever received.

But now to real life.  People asked how our family was doing and all I could describe was that we were living in an emotional aftermath.  We sat in shock, surrounded by a lot of anger, some sadness, digressions in kids' behavior, the reality of James' chronic pain and a heart condition in Annika that was here to stay.  I had a hypersensitivity to noises which caused me to panic and cry whenever anyone was hurt, or even if I thought they were.  When the kids were playing and I heard screaming outside, I looked at my neighbors' faces to gauge if it was an emergency or not.  We knew that 2015 had to be dedicated to spending quality time as a family and to try to heal from the trauma of the past two years.

That February, I started going to individual counseling.  If there ever was a time in my life that I needed therapy, it was then.  I felt broken and I needed an experienced Christian lady's perspective.  Can I say these visits were wonderful and horrible all at once?  I'd hoped to talk about the past two years, but that's not the way it works.  No, it all gets threshed up.  Suddenly, all the sadnesses of my life clattered through my mind.

Genuinely, I am so thankful for those months of recollection and correction.  Sometimes I came home and stared at the wall.  Sometimes I mulled over a given topic all week.  I was awoken to my false thought patterns and was given new tools to cope with my anger, which was a huge issue at the time.  For five months I went, and I anticipated Wednesday nights - a time of painful growth and beauty.

However, in May, my spirits spiraled.  So many dreams lost: The health of my husband and daughter, international missions...a bleak future is all I could see, actually, I could see no future, and I felt crazy from post traumatic stress symptoms.  I've been discouraged or depressed for a few days at a time before, but this time the days kept going.  I woke up each day with a blankness in my heart and mind, a tastelessness for life.  May turned to June.  School ended for my kids and the days even more blank and void and purposeless.

"Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God."     Psalm 42:5

The words hit a wall.  The question remained, but the hope felt hopeless.  The future praise, stale.  My mind knew right, my deadened heart didn't care.

James, gave me lots of space, but I know he worried when his wife wasn't snapping out of it.  A walking zombie.  In my peripheral vision I saw him watching me, but I only felt hopeless, lost, alone and disconnected. 

One Sunday in June, a dear friend came to town.  She saw and sensed that things were not well.  She witnessed my screaming panic when a child was reported as injured (he turned out to be just fine).  And she prayed.  She had brought along her friend for the visit and she also prayed.  I know my name headed their prayer lists.  I thanked God for sending a prayer warrior my way who knew me so well, and another who didn't but who saw an inside glimpse of the difficult home battles James and I faced.

They left, and I was encouraged, but walked on in sadness.  I knew God had brought them at the perfect moment, but saw no change.  I didn't feel God.  Can I say God wasn't there?  No, I can't.  He was there. Was he not listening to my cries?  No, he was.  Was my rebellious heart unwilling to listen to him?  I don't know the answer.  But I didn't feel anything.  I knew it was a good thing and a loving God who sent a friend of 18 years from across the world to walk alongside me right when I needed her.  Beautiful Lady Number One.

Two weeks later I gave up, not on God, just on joy.  I remember it clearly, another Sunday, Father's Day, 2015.  I pulled my body along to church with the husband and kids, but knew I was done.  I couldn't fight or try any longer.  I was going to settle with feeling hopeless and give up on the too difficult battle to make my heart feel any other way.

I sat through Sunday School class as usual.  It ended.  Time to go to church.  But before we could go, she appeared, Beautiful Lady Number Two.  Another friend, one I've known for maybe 6-7 years.  She told me that she knew she needed to pray for me.  And she did.  In that classroom I stood with tears streaming down my face as she prayed for me and asked God's comfort as I mourned the loss of a dream for international missions.  She knew the sting of "not now" and understood the pain.  And God knew that I needed an understanding friend right at that moment.  I marveled at his goodness in sending one.

Church.  Misery.  The songs spelt out pain.  I sat in my seat with my journal during the worship songs and finally wrote out my complaint to God, every detail of my anger and frustration and loss.  I don't remember the sermon.  But at the end of the service, I sat with a sleeping child in my lap.  We sat as we waited for everyone to leave.  I stared into nothingness.  Lost. 

And then it happened.

Beautiful Lady Number Three.  She approached me from behind with her husband.

"Hi, I'm Mel."

"Hi...."  I assumed I had met her in the nursery or something, I'm so bad with faces.  I waited for her to say where we'd met but...

"You don't know me, but, I can I pray for you?  I recognize that look on your face, and I really feel God calling me to pray for you.  Is that okay?"

Stunned.  Utterly stunned.  Choked up and crying.  I kicked James to give her a rundown on why, perhaps, I might need prayer since I was unable to talk.  He spoke of Annika's heart condition and maybe something else, I don't remember. 

But she prayed.  And when she prayed, hand on my shoulder, she prayed for each of those things I had just written down in my complaint to God in my own private journal on that day of resignation.  She prayed as if I had been sharing my heart with her for an hour beforehand.  She prayed as if she knew me.  A total stranger.  One who "happened" to be visiting our church that day. 

And THAT is the power of a loving God.  A long-time friend from across the world, a friend from home, and a total stranger - all called by God to pray for this lost girl.  

God used them all, in progression, to whisper in my ear.

First, 
"I love you."
Then,
"I am with you."
And lastly, 
"I know you."

That message of "I know you," pulled me out.  A total stranger praying exactly my heart.  Only God could speak those words to me through her.  

Psalm 42 describes tears, lost times, wished-for joy, condemnation, mourning, and suffering.  The psalmist felt forgotten by God, swept away by God's waves and breakers.  There are seasons.

"He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters...
he rescued me because he delighted in me."  
Psalm 18:16,19b

Psalm 18 paints the story.  He delighted in me enough in those darks hours to tell of his love for me, his presence with me, and his knowledge of my intimate thoughts.  In his delight, he drew me out of deep waters.  He took hold of me.

My only part was to see and take hold of his hand.

On Rest (Written in February but not posted til now....)

I've been seeking rest.

I'm a little bit on hold, "until we get past this."  The problem is, there's always a new "this."  Sometimes it's big, sometimes it's unnoticed-a dripping faucet-but I can't rest.  I have to recover instead.  Or figure out the new thing.

In the past year I've dealt with depression, a traumatic experience with an unconscious child, a month of the flu in our house, my Grandma passing and now 11 nights of RSV scariness in the hospital.  Thrown in there, we've also had Annika on low-activity monitoring because she was showing more symptoms of heart failure and we were attempting to avoid "an emergency 911 situation."  That was October-January.  It's hard to rest when you can't let your 2 year old become too winded, ever.  Those are the big stress boulders.  Only slightly smaller, is the misbehavior of my other kids, and how to navigate each one's needs in the midst of the constant stress.

I know it's typical for kids to be unappreciative of their parents, but when I'm faced with: someone groaning about breakfast; someone being too overwhelmed to do schoolwork; someone yelling at me that they will not, cannot, EVER go to time out and continue to whine and whine and protest no matter what I tell them to do; when my every decision feels fought against; when someone will not put on that shirt; when they constantly tease and bicker - rest feels impossible.

I feel like I'm drowning.  I can't even think clearly.  The quiet evenings to ourselves don't start until 9 at the very earliest and, by that time, we're wasted.  We can't put together cohesive sentences or even focus our eyes on anything.  We just droop around and drool.  No.  Not really.  But sort of.

I read this and think, "Ok, then.  Get a grip on your kids.  This is the real issue here."  Maybe it is.  But I don't think we're alone in this.  I think there are seasons of THIS IS TOO HARD with our kids.  There are so many times, lately especially, when I throw up my hands because I have no idea what to do! 

I think because of all the "bigger" things happening, I lose sight of the "smaller" things, the ones which really matter.  I wake up in the morning and throw myself into autopilot.  Home school, cleaning, feeding Annika (she still requires a lot of time and assistance), cooking, cleaning, refereeing, and did I say cleaning?...getting it all done.  I just go.  And in my going, I sort of forget to plan and to really think!  I forget that these dear little ones are my number one ministry right now.  I forget that they are my calling.  I forget!

I forget that, while I'm going and pushing through and hoping for that future rest, the days are flying by and they're growing up.  And because I'm not quite rested, right now, I'm not quite giving them my best.  In fact, sometimes it's my worst.

That's the challenge.  That's the call.  To rest now.  To find rest now.  That future calm may not come until you find yourself in Heavenly eternity with your Creator.  I might not have a week of solitude, ever, but I can play my guitar and my piano every day.  I can sing.  I can get up early and read or write.  I don't.  Not often enough.  But I can, and I should, because it's rest for me, and as I rest, I can give more of myself.  And I can think.