It's Way Messier Than It Appears
It’s crazier and messier than it appears. There are five hurting children who need to be loved, trained, nurtured and disciplined. Five children that need to laugh, play, sing, dance, make messes, go to therapy and counseling, eat constantly, be held and reminded that they are dearly loved and that God has a special plan for their life.
I’m finding that joy isn’t in the easy, it’s in the hard places of life, where I am poured out so much that there is nothing left of me. It’s in days where I️’m in my sweats, folding one more load of laundry with my hair thrown on top of my head, that I️ ask God to cover me with His grace and give me strength for another day. It’s in that flashback of my easier life, before grief, with the same husband through it all, that the memory of him and the life I no longer have becomes sorrow that rises up and reminds me of what no longer is. My heart still aches in ways that words can not communicate. The moments where I’m holding my five year old, once again telling him memories of his daddy in Heaven that he can’t recall himself and it hurts him because we all see that the vivid memories can fade to the harsh realities of death.
It’s seeing the man I love walk through the door with tenderness and compassion in his eyes when he sees the chaos and his stressed and weary wife. It’s wanting to love well with everything you have when you feel like there is nothing left to give. It’s loving two children whose eyes tell the tale of loss from the womb when choices were made that effected them forever, to the hope of a life with a normal family, to watching the mother that chose them for life slowly die before their eyes, to living in loving chaos and now having to trust another mother who they aren’t promised will live. Their actions speak of the hurt they have felt, the patterns they have created and the needs that only time, Jesus and lots of sacrificial love can fill.
It’s laying my head on my pillow I have longed for all day, to turn over and let the tears of guilt fall and let Jesus hold them in His bottle, taking my heavy burdens and giving me comfort. Did they get enough of me today? Do they feel loved? Are the ones who misbehave getting more attention than the ones who have deeper needs that aren’t showing yet? Did I give them my all? Did my husband get my measly leftovers again? Did I look all of them in the eyes and tell them how loved they are? Did I share the gospel with them today? Oh God, why haven’t they trusted in you yet? God, change their hearts and lives! Help them to get eternity. More tears fall and more walls in my heart fall.
There is nothing here that is whole, only brokenness that is begging for the Healer to give abundant grace and joyful strength for tomorrow’s sorrow.
Trusting His hand as the strong hazel eyed man next to me holds me and prays God’s truth over me once again, reminding me I am not alone in this journey fighting for these souls and broken hearts. This burden is too great for me to carry so I must once again yield it to the One who carried the greatest burden and yielded the greatest victory on the cross for me. This today is my cross, this today is my burden, but this today can also be my victory. Less of me and more of Him through the pouring out of my self to be filled again.