I listened in the deep dark of the wee hours of the morning to the strong winds slamming themselves against my house. I envisioned shingles blowing off of our desperately-needs-to-be-replaced-roof in droves and I wondered if the now-unused satellite dish that languished right above our room on that same roof was going to come unbolted at any minute.
I don't know what originally woke me, but it seems that any little sound rouses me these days, and I find it very hard to fall quickly back to sleep. I'd read in an article somewhere that sometimes people who suffer from hypothyroidism have trouble with their sleep cycle, often waking regularly at around 2 or 3 a.m. and finding it near impossible to fall right back to sleep. Since my hypothyroidism has run unchecked for almost two years, I am sure that has something to do with it.
In the past, I would have just flicked the TV on and started playing one of the hundred or so Golden Girls episodes I had TiVo-ed for just such an occasion. Many moons ago, when I was young, when it was babies to nurse and soothe that woke me (and not hormonal imbalances) I had gotten into the habit of flipping the TV to late night satellite channels to keep myself from falling asleep while tending to the baby at hand. In order to avoid the (often disgusting) early morning commercials, I gravitated towards the Hallmark Channel, which, at the time, was rerunning The Golden Girls episodes (probably for all those old women in their early forties with hormonal imbalances that kept them awake at 3 a.m. #irony). As far back as college I'd appreciated that show and the chemistry of the actresses made me want to retire to Miami and find awesome roommates when I was an old widow. Eventually, after late nights and early mornings with five babies, watching those reruns was the only way I could reliably fall asleep.
Early last summer, I lost the ability to simply flick on the TV and play whatever I wanted. As we moved further and further into unemployment (by that time, it had been over a year), we were like a ship in a storm, unloading all the extra weight of our budget trying to stay afloat. So with much sadness, I said good-bye to The Golden Girls and falling asleep easily.
Which takes us back to this particular night (sorry, sometimes I enjoy a good rabbit trail), listening to my house bracing itself against the wind. Like many of the previous nights of the same, I laid thinking about that old roof and how relieved I had been to learn that our tax return this year would be enough to cover the cost of actually replacing it and not just trying to patch the places where many years of spring winds had taken their toll. Of course that relief turned to disappointment once again after last Tuesday.
I was feeling the beginning of renewal-the kind that comes from a long season of loss and drought. With the promise of a good tax return we were going to be able to not only replace our roof, but finally buy some larger-ticket items that we have needed for a while:
A new bed for us.
(the one we have is 15+ years old)
A new sliding glass door for our dining room.
(ours is currently broken)
A power washer rental, a tall ladder
and two new front porch posts
(so our HOA will stop fining us for home repairs we need to perform)
And maybe some new clothes for me.
(I haven't bought new-or used- clothes in two years)
It felt really good to hope again-to know that we would have the ability to take care of our household the way that we are supposed to and to not have to fret about where the money was going to come from. In anticipation of the tax return's arrival, I had even splurged on a pair of new flats (because some time last year I lost one of my only pair of black flats and I'd found this dark gray pair on clearance for $13-score!)
Except those bargain flats ended up costing me a lot more than $13.
As I was reveling in my newfound hope on the way to the dentist with my middlest child, the flocked bottom of my shiny new shoes accidentally slipped off my brake pedal too fast and hit my gas pedal even faster and-boom!- into the rear end of the lady in front of me I smashed.
First, I checked in with my middlest to make sure he was ok. We weren't going very fast (the woman in front of me had just started advancing, and so had I), but you never know, so I wanted to make sure he was ok, of course. He was, thankfully, and so was I, and so was the irate woman getting out of her car in front of me.
"What happened?!" she shouted at me.
All the rage and hurt and pain that I've stuffed down inside the past two years welled up in me.
What had happened?
What had happened?!
I wanted to yell back.
What had happened was that my husband was unjustly fired.
What had happened was that he was then unemployed for almost two years.
What had happened was that we lost a court case trying to regain his job.
Twice.
What had happened was that we lost so, so much during that time.
What happened was that my husband had to fight to win a job that was technically beneath both his education and his ability and suffer a paycheck that is far too small to support our large family because it was the only full time job he could find.
What happened was that I had the audacity to buy myself a new pair of shoes.
Because I felt happy.
But I didn't yell.
"I'm so sorry. My foot slipped." was my weak response.
And then I wept. I cried like I hadn't cried since I was a child. The floodgates opened and there I was on a median on Route 3 bawling my eyes out.
No longer happy.
No longer hopeful.
All I could think about was how much this was going to cost. The crumpled hood of my 12 year old minivan looked frighteningly expensive to repair. The front bumper had pushed violently into the engine compartment when I struck her car, so although it had done its job and popped back out, I could only imagine the damage it had done to the inside of the van as well.
But the cost was more than the car. It was everything that the amount of repairing or replacing the van represented: good-bye roof, home repairs, door, bed, and new clothes. It was the feeling of returning back to normal, no matter how ill the new normal fit us. It was the starting all over again.
Clearly my priorities were out of whack.
Because my hope should not be -should never be- in money. Money is a vehicle to get things in life done. When you have more money, you do more. When you have less money, you do less. Which is all very logical, but not very human, unfortunately. Especially when you've gone from more to less so quickly.
After my embarrassing ugly cry in front of not only the poor (angry. very angry and unsympathetic) woman that I hit, but also a firefighter and a police officer, my husband came to collect his verge-of-a nervous-breakdown wife and we drove home separately.
This time I was more careful with my feet.
That morning, right as rain at 2 a.m., I was wide awake, and instead of turning on some Netflix rerun substitute for The Golden Girls that I'd taken to over the last 8 months or so, I got up and sat on the couch and opened my Bible. I figured God was waking me up every morning at 2 a.m. because I had this (now glaring) problem of not trusting Him. I mean, I say all the time that I trust Him, but actually putting that into practice was quite another thing.
Hence the hopeful feeling when we were set to have money.
And the hopeless feeling when it was suddenly snatched away.
I let the tears fall down my face again (hey, I'd already ugly cried before 3 strangers that day. If I can't ugly cry in front of my Father, then who can I?) and the only prayer I could muster was
"Help me."
Through my blurry glasses and weary, tired, cried-out eyes, I opened my Bible to the Psalms. David had not written a specific Psalm to those of us who bought new shoes and then crashed their cars, but I felt like if there was anyone in the Bible who might have felt my despair, it was David. He was definitely a guy of major highs and sudden lows. And he loved God, and he seemed to understand who God is much better than I ever have.
I skimmed a few verses, turned a few pages.
Now, if you've ever been awake at o-dark-thirty in the morning, crying like a baby and begging God to help you, you know that pretty much whatever verse the small voice inside of you says to read all the way through, you should probably do that, because chances are, that's the Holy Spirit pointing you to where you need to be at that moment.
That night He pointed me to Psalm 42. I'm going to write it all, because unlike some Psalms, where we read them and we can sort of pick out bits and pieces of the verses to apply to our situation, this entire Psalm was written for me in that moment. Not one line could I pick out and say it was more important or held more meaning for me. It was as if David had seen me-into me- and written Psalm 42:
"As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
While they say to me all day long, 'Where is your God?'
These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me.
For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him
For the help of His presence.
O my God, my soul is in despair within me;
Therefore I remember You from the land of the Jordan
And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls;
All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me.
The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime;
And His song will be with me in the night,
A prayer to the God of my life.
I will say to God my rock, 'Why have You forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?'
As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me,
While they say to me all day long, 'Where is your God?'
Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God."
He saw me.
He sees me.
I used to think that my faith was strong. I had the knowledge of Him. I believe that Christ is my personal Savior, and though I mess up a.lot., I do my best to follow Him. I used to praise Him, enjoy worshipping Him, enjoy being in His presence. Now I just feel forgotten. Rejected. Persecuted. Full of loss and no life. In despair. Exiled. Cursed.
And my hope?
My hope was in a tax return.
So for now, it is baby steps. It is me relearning how to love Him and allowing His love to change me. It is relearning that hope isn't in any one thing down here, but it is something gained through perseverance. It is drinking the spiritual milk I thought I'd so long ago weaned myself from, raising my eyes to Him and learning who he actually is versus who I think He is.
It will be hard and probably will involve more pain and maybe even some disappointment along the way. Not disappointment from Him, of course, but disappointment because I've come to realize that a lot of what I thought God was is not enough.
He is more.
So, so much more.
~M~
No comments:
Post a Comment