Whoo it has been awhile for me. My life has been incredibly busy and complicated the past few months. It is funny how no matter what things you are going through life doesn’t stop. I recently passed the 1 year anniversary of my beautiful and loving sister’s death and was finally able to recognize how much I had just been barely maneuvering through life the past year. This coupled with the very emotional struggle of dealing with our son with serious emotional and mental issues had taken a real toll on me and had hit my faith and trust pretty hard.
Not that I didn’t still lean strongly on my faith but I found that I didn’t trust my hearing or his hearing my cries for help. I had stopped leaning on God and began to lean on my own understanding. Now I don’t know about anyone else but I know that my understanding is pretty limited. So leaning on this was not the smartest thing to do but when you are struggling with grief, pain and frustration is pretty hard to see hope slip sliding out of your grasp. I compare this to the foxhole mentality. When you’re in that foxhole and the bullets are flying around your head and grenades are going off all around you, it’s pretty hard to know that your side is winning. It’s when you can get out of that hole and see the enemy retreating that you begin to realize, hey it’s not as bad as I thought. The big issue is getting out of the foxhole. I couldn’t get out of mine, every time I tried to climb out and see over the top, another issue or meltdown occurred and kept me from seeing the progress that was being made and I began to believe that God was just not hearing my cries for help.
It was only recently during a conversation with my Daughter Meghan did I suddenly begin the climb out of the foxhole. Suddenly things became pretty obvious, God had never left me, he had always been in that foxhole with me but I had just been to blind in my grief and fears to see it. I could also see how God had been moving and working in my life and that of my family even though from my perspective everything was going wrong and not much was changing for the better. My understanding was flawed and full of insecurities. During our conversation I became adamant about needing to have things all figured out before making big decisions like changing jobs or moving to other parts of the world. Meghan looked at me and said, “But Mom if it is God than he will provide for all of our needs won’t he?” Ouch, did that really hit home somehow I went from the Girl who was driven by faith and believing for God’s divine grace to provide to this fearful controlling Girl that needed to make sure that everything was just so before I would make any moves of any kind. Somewhere in the past year, I had stopped walking by faith and went back to relying on my own strength and abilities.
The good news is the old (but new) girl is back, the one that is walking by faith and not by sight! I don’t recommend leaning on your understanding, because usually we don’t understand a whole lot and that can get us into a lot of trouble. I think I would rather just let God take the lead and see where it takes me. I have a feeling that things are going to get a lot more interesting around here! So thanks for patiently waiting for me to feel inspired to write again (for those who are reading this) I am heading out in a week to watch our oldest Son graduate from college but I plan to try to update and share as much as I can while traveling.