I'm just feeling out of sorts and lonely. I know it comes from the current job transition happening in our lives, and that has spurned lots of imaginings, what if's and questions. I suppose it's good to evaluate the big questions and decisions in life at times, but the truth is, I feel so inadequate and helpless in so many many ways.
We were going to be missionaries! Do great things for God! Go to Viet Nam!. Instead we had kids and became just another statistic on debt in America, no matter how much we tried and how much we tried not to be. Instead we come smack dab up against shocking grief, pain and loss.
Then we were going to trust God for our family size and "really be a witness" in that way. Yeah, whatever. Instead we ran smack dab into physical illness, a back injury and financial constrictions.
Then we were gong to adopt a special needs baby. But that door slammed shut in our face as well.
Pathetic. And on some level I suppose I'm still grieving that, even though it's been years now and I can see the good in having been denied that. But the grief is still there. A loss, and it's one of those things I don't feel like I have permission to ever talk about with my friends. It's not like we haven't already been abundantly blessed with children, afterall.
Dead-end after dead-end after dead-end. And I wonder why.
In so many ways these just feel like fallow years.
But something about praying in secret comes to mind. Maybe it's true afterall.
Now I'd better go find the kingdom of Heaven here at home in the laundry baskets, the mending, the dishwasher and caring for a kid with a fever. Because if it's only to be found outside of those things, there is absolutely no hope for me left at all.
We were going to be missionaries! Do great things for God! Go to Viet Nam!. Instead we had kids and became just another statistic on debt in America, no matter how much we tried and how much we tried not to be. Instead we come smack dab up against shocking grief, pain and loss.
Then we were going to trust God for our family size and "really be a witness" in that way. Yeah, whatever. Instead we ran smack dab into physical illness, a back injury and financial constrictions.
Then we were gong to adopt a special needs baby. But that door slammed shut in our face as well.
Pathetic. And on some level I suppose I'm still grieving that, even though it's been years now and I can see the good in having been denied that. But the grief is still there. A loss, and it's one of those things I don't feel like I have permission to ever talk about with my friends. It's not like we haven't already been abundantly blessed with children, afterall.
Dead-end after dead-end after dead-end. And I wonder why.
In so many ways these just feel like fallow years.
But something about praying in secret comes to mind. Maybe it's true afterall.
Now I'd better go find the kingdom of Heaven here at home in the laundry baskets, the mending, the dishwasher and caring for a kid with a fever. Because if it's only to be found outside of those things, there is absolutely no hope for me left at all.
Comments
You are both too young to realize it, but it's over an entire lifetime of Nothing experiences -- getting up every day, getting the kids ready for school every day, going to work every day, what *looks like* the humdrum of it all -- that great characters are formed. Saints are formed in the minutiae of daily Yesses to God. Salvation is achieved in obedience to God.
Those lives you planned for yourself, Alanna, all fell through because they were not God's will for you. THIS IS. When His will for you become something else, you will be shown it.
I am so privileged to know *two* saints. ;-)
You have my prayers, though, because I know it's a mourning process.
It is in dealing *cheerfully and lovingly* with what God sends to us every day that we learn obedience, humility and faithfulness.
We learn to see the image of Christ in everybody with whom we have contact, no matter their faults and imperfections, which after all, are certainly no worse than our own ones :-)
We can *choose* to be loving or disgruntled with our lot everyday.
The lesson we learn depends on our attitude, to a great degree. This is something I personally really struggle to do......