In Which I Learn That He is the God Who Sees

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."

It wasn't David who had seen into me. It was God-my God-who knew that on that night, in the infancy of the morning, I would cry out to Him and He knew that this would be His resounding answer. 
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~

The "H" Word

When The Big Thing happened to us, our life was going pretty smoothly. My husband had worked hard and had arrived at a point in his career where he was earning a good wage and had a great benefits package and a nice chunk of vacation time (not that we have ever taken a vacation). We had five kids in a small private school and I was finally approaching my dream of having entire school days to myself.

To organize my home.

To cook the elaborate meals that everyone else seemed to have time for.

To knit and journal and craft.

To run errands without the ball of noise that usually surrounded me.

To visit coffee shops and bakeries.

To meal plan and grocery shop in peace.

To have "me" time.

To be normal.

I grew up in a household where dad went off to work, the kids went off to school and mom stayed at home doing whatever moms did at home while the children were in school. If you've ever read a Ramona book, that was pretty much exactly my childhood (only I was Beezus, Ramona was a little brother and we lived in Central Illinois, not Oregon). My visions of motherhood, once I had come to terms with the fact that I wasn't destined to be single forever, were not much different that that which I had observed of my own household as I was growing up.

I would have exactly two children.

The first would be a girl.

Followed four years later with a boy.

My husband would have a stable, well paying job.

I would stay home and raise my darlings.

At five years old they would start Kindergarten.

I would stay at home and bake things.

The children would attend school until graduation.

They would leave the nest.

Stuff in between.

Retirement.

Of course, all of this would happen in my life without the mess my own parents made at the end of my time in high school. But yeah, this was the plan. Until I had a son first. And then three more. And then a daughter. So already my plans were being messed with-but aside from a couple of false starts, we eventually had them all in school and for one glorious semester, I was living the dream. I was even able to take a part time job in the preschool of the kids' school for fun money. And then The Big Thing happened and my world changed. For the first year after The Big Thing we were blessed to have a pastor that understood and cared enough about us to allow my kids to experience some normalcy in their lives. It was a pure gift and a huge blessing for them to all to stay at their private school so that The Big Thing wouldn't hurt them as quickly and as much as it could have. For that I will ever be grateful.

Knowing this grace would definitely not happen again, we had to make plans for the next school year. The public schools here aren't the best, and we had a terrible experience with the elementary school and its principal before we decided to send all of the children to the private school, so for us, public school was not an option. We had to start seriously considering the H-word.

Homeschool.

The thought of it made me sick to my stomach. We had dabbled before in homeschooling a couple times- once with my oldest for Kindergarten, and once again for my second oldest in second grade. It was a nightmare. I have ADD and I didn't consider myself disciplined enough to be responsible for my children's schooling. Feeding and general care? Got it. But school? Gah. No.way. With my oldest, it was difficult, even in Kindergarten, because he is a typical first born: he loves order and having a plan and knowing what is happening every half an hour.  Couple that with the fact that he loves everything about being in school, from the standing in line to the little desks to the seat work, having a mother who-if pressed into homeschooling-leans more toward the Charlotte Mason way of doing things which means no real schedule and definitely no seat work. 

Like I said: difficult.

When we attempted it again for my second oldest's second grade year, it was another disaster. I had two younger kids at home and underfoot and he was (and is) a stubborn student. In fact, he is the exact opposite of his older brother in that he hates school. Hates everything about it and would happily exist living under my roof, illiterate, for the rest of his life if not for the fact that we have made it clear that this is not an option and if he doesn't want to be homeless when he is an adult, he's got to do the learning thing. 

Like I said: difficult.

So when faced with this option, I cried. I don't mean that I silently cried inside. I actually bawled my eyes out. Maybe even more than once. This time, the prospect of being the one responsible for their education wasn't even the issue. I wasn't scared of homeschooling. Even in the short ten years since we had attempted it the first time, the resources for homeschoolers have expanded and people of all walks of life (not just nutty separatists) have started taking the education of their children back home. Loneliness was of mild concern, but really it was my own loneliness that worried me. No, what made me cry and throw a fit was something quite different this time.

I was mad. I was angry that I was losing my grip on my plans. I was upset that my expectations for my life weren't panning out. That I was going to miss out on my alone time. That this was happening to me. Me. Me. Me. What about me?! Did God not care that this was going to change my life? That it was going to push me far outside of my comfort zone and make me face things inside of myself that I didn't want to see? That it was going to challenge the way I had become a lazy parent?*

Oh He cared. He cared a great deal. He still cares.

And that is why He allowed it to happen. Because doing things in my own strength and with my own plans equaled success in my eyes. If I could do it (anything) on my own, it was work I could be proud of. The "I made this" is strong in me. It was (and from time to time still is) a stronghold that needed to be broken- a place in my heart and life where I had replaced God with hard work and a can-do attitude. A stubborn rebellion to His whispers of "Let me show you what I can do through you, flawed as you are, silly girl."

Over the last six or so months, He has shown me that there is no way I can do this on my own. That most days it is Him and only Him that pulls me out of my depression long enough to teach lessons to my younger kids and assign work to my older kids (we won't talk about the two weeks of "fun school" we did on my bed because I couldn't bring myself to even leave it).
It hasn't been without its problems: a few months into it, I realized that, while doing the work was not a problem for him, my oldest child was becoming a shell of himself-squirreling himself away in his room to do lessons, sleeping, and occasionally reading, then making an appearance long enough to whip the other four kids into a frenzy just to disappear back into his room, leaving me with the aftermath and hurt feelings he caused. My husband and I discussed and with much worry and anguish and copious amounts of prayer, we enrolled him into the second semester at the local public school. He is slowly returning to himself- the outgoing, happy kid that I know so well. He is less annoying to his siblings and while some of the schoolwork there isn't very challenging for him (two of his 10th grade level classes are covering topics that he learned in 6th grade), it is in the trusting God with his heart and mind that I have found strength in our decision. I have no Earthly idea if we've done the right thing, but I trust that God sees us and knows that in our hearts, we are trying to do the best in each kids' situation.

And that is what it is about, isn't it?

Doing what is best for them. 

Trusting in God. 

Knowing He has my heart in His hands.

In the end, homeschooling hasn't been that bad. Though my sarcastic, wry (and stunningly honest) answer to those who ask me how I like it is "It isn't my favorite" doesn't always belie that fact.  I now try to quickly add "But it's growing on me!" at an attempt to not sound completely like Debbie Downer. This year, I gave myself very specific parameters when it came to choosing curriculum with the hope that whatever job my husband eventually acquired would afford us to again be able to send them back to private school. Alas, that didn't happen, so homeschooling is our day to day for the foreseeable future. The problem with the curriculum is that after a while, it is humdrum and boring and difficult to teach if you aren't teaching a classroom full of children. Next year, I plan to stretch myself a bit more and really find things to engage myself my kids. 

And next year, I hope to have some of the angst and worry that's been driven by deep depression (and a few other physical issues) that has gone untreated for such a long time. My hope is that once I am out of the fog, I will be a better teacher.

A better mother.

A better everything.

~M~

*Please do not read this that I think that non-homeschooling parents are lazy. I am not passing judgment on anyone in any way that they choose to educate their kids. I am definitely not a homeschooling snob who thinks that if you aren't doing it yourself, you're doing it wrong. I know that folks like that exist, but I am not one of them. No, this line is purely about me. And it is a post for another day that I will explore what it has come to mean to me to be a "lazy parent".