Seriously.

Christmas is a few days past… our lives have been running at a break-neck speed since, oh, sometime mid-November… I’ve been walking around, pretending to be a somewhat normal person… it’s been kinda nice.

Yesterday morning in church, I found myself full of emotion.  A mountain of feelings began to overflow, and could no longer be contained.

What is this?  I thought I was doing okay?

But.  I’m not.  Nothing about my life is normal.  Nothing about my circumstances are normal. Worry and Fear are trying to have their way with me.

I should be used to that by now though.  So what is my problem?  My problem is that I just can’t find it in myself to accept the way things are.  To be okay with them. 

Blah…

I don’t feel like this is coming out like it was running through my mind… maybe I should back up.

We really, really, really had a nice Christmas.  We did. It was peaceful.  Joyful.  A blessing.  I berate myself, because I know how much worse things could be and how blessed we truly are!

Except for that one-little-constant black cloud. 

You’ve probably been wondering how/if HSSH handled Christmas. 

Yeah. That.

Christmas morning.  He called.  When he knew we were in church.

I let the kids hear the message.  No one called him back.  Zach, in fact, was the only one that voiced any opinion.  He said, “I am not here, if you all call him back.”

No one else said a word.

I was torn.  What do I do?  Do I encourage them more to call him?

I wondered if Leah had heard the message, I didn’t think she was in the room when it played.  So by evening, I brought it up to her.  I asked if she had heard the message, and she said she had.  I asked her if she wanted to call him.  She quietly said, “no.”

The next day, day after Christmas, they get a card in the mail from him.  It has some money and a note… I feel like it is almost worse than being ignored completely.  A real slap in the face.

Again, I suggest that calling him to say thank you would probably be appropriate… again, no one says a word.  Again, I mention it to Leah on her own, she says, “not right now.”

I can’t come up with a way to explain to my 4 & 5 year old, who cannot read and don’t know the value of a $20 bill, that this is their gift from their dad… so I say nothing to them.

Time passes… and it is making me more and more upset… more angry… more frustrated… I think, I am more upset by this than they are… I believe that I am worrying about the long term ramifications of his choices…

I can’t fix this.  I can’t stop this.  I can’t change this.  All I can do is continue, as I have for over three years now, to cry out to the only One who can… and sometimes He seems incredibly silent.

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So, this morning I sit in church… and the pastor reads in Job and then in Proverbs…  In Job (38-41) where God answers Job’s question of “why”, putting Job in perspective (words I need to read daily)… and Job replies, finally in 42…

1 Then Job replied to the LORD :

2 "I know that you can do all things;
       no plan of yours can be thwarted.

3 You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?'
       Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
       things too wonderful for me to know.

4 "You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak;
       I will question you,
       and you shall answer me.'

5 My ears had heard of you
       but now my eyes have seen you.

6 Therefore I despise myself
       and repent in dust and ashes."

…and my own thoughts go to places of repentance… repentance for the doubts, the fears, the anger, the frustration… everything that overwhelms me… over and over and over again.

And I face the place that my biggest problems lies.  Really.  My biggest problem is that I have to do what God is asking me to do.  I have to believe what He is asking me to believe.  And it makes no sense.  It is not reasonable.  Rational. Or comprehendible. 

If I didn’t care about HSSH, if I didn’t feel.  If I didn’t want things to be different than they are.  If I didn’t believe God could change things.  If I didn’t want God to change things.  If I didn’t love…

If I didn’t love.

How?  How can you love someone who treats us this way?  How?

I don’t know.

It’s not a human love.

It’s God’s love.

This must be a glimmer of the way that He loves us.  Has to be.

So… this must also be a glimmer of how He is hurt by us…  Has to be.

I confess, I don’t much like it… It leaves me vulnerable in a way I don’t like… sometimes I just want to walk away and pretend like I didn’t hear HIM say what I know He’s said…

But, He never walks away from us… in the midst of the hardship, I am still glad to be learning.  I am so Glad that He is God, and He loves like this, all the time… Like the pastor said yesterday, God will always find something about us to love, no matter what we have done… I have that same feeling about HSSH… how can that not be of God?

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Leah and I were watching Prince Caspian the other day.  The scene was where the 4 children, and others walk, into the shrine where the stone table is, Aslan has not been seen for 100’s of years… they light the fire that goes all around the room and they see Aslan’s engraved picture on the wall… Looking at Aslan’s face, Lucy says, “He must know what he’s doing.”  They all look at each other, and Aslan, and Peter says, “I think it’s up to us now.”

I sat there thinking… that is what I feel… So often I begin to think that it is up to me to figure this out… I thought HE knew what HE was doing… I feel like they must have felt.  Like He must have forgotten us…

Leah turned and said to me… “that is just like we are as we wait for Jesus to return.  People think, ‘He’s not coming back’”

I told her she was right, I also told her that that is how we can be in our lives, when we think God has given us a promise here on earth, and so much time goes by…and God is no where to be seen… it must be up to us now…

She smiled.  She understood how I was feeling about HSSH, she feels the same way.

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I wouldn’t be honest with you if I didn’t tell you that I doubted my own words after that… I hoped I wasn’t giving her false hope… someone told me today, God’s reputation is His problem, not ours… I sure hope I never falsely represent Him… I also don’t want to miss a chance to believe for a miracle… with my kids.

I’ve already had one of my boys say that they are frustrated with God over this… it is so hard to wait, it is so hard to see them doubt…it is so hard to know the right thing to do.  What to say.  Too often I just say nothing.

James resists my authority… pushing to be grown up… I feel out of control there…

I dread, dread taking Kiahna back to preschool and dealing with her issues… she does so well at home, I just want to hide away with her and pretend she is okay… please?

I am going to wait until morning to hit publish on this… and if I feel peace about it I’ll post it… it may not make sense to anyone, I am not sure it even makes sense to me… but you’ll pray for your mixed up friend and her six kids anyway, won’t you? 

Maybe I’ll wake up and this will all go away… one can dream.

Pam

Originally Published at, You're Gonna Miss This, December 29, 2009