Faith like a child.

Today, I am quite humbled. Where is my faith?  Where is my joy?  Where is my ability to walk on water, to transcend the storm?

I was away for the weekend, picking up my girls, had one day back, and am just as dysfunctional as the day they left :). Getting out the door this morning was a great challenge. Getting up and going is always a great challenge. I am constantly trying to manage the tension in my parenting between nurture and discipline, structure and flexibility, foot-down consistency and loving grace. Do I push? or do I rest? Do I fight? or do I relax? I know I only have two kids, but they are... challenging. I think I'm still trying to be both Lynn and myself.  It's psychotic. I can't seem to stop. How do I adjust to just being me? How do I stop trying to meet all of my kids' needs...?

I gave Alea my permission last night to pray for a new Daddy.  She still randomly calls out in prayer for God to make a way for Lynn to come back to us.  It breaks my heart because she just needs a Daddy.  Of course she needs her Daddy, but some days, my mother-heart feels like, Anyone will do!!  Someone come and be a Daddy to my daughters!!  (a little more light hearted humor than seriousness in that tone...!)

I have so much anxiety about the present and the future. I'm always (somewhat subconsciously) trying to remind myself that Lynn is gone.  Always working my mind to accept my today and my tomorrow in a world without Lynn. This land is still so foreign to me, and I am filled with inexplicable anxiety trying to imagine a new September, wrap my head around another year, a new normal as a single mom, Roya in school, a young widow trying to make a way, live a new and different life.

I am still exhausted, (as I have written too many times before...), and have little hope of renewed energy. I feel sad about my physical state. I could write about my history with a fibromyalgia-like syndrome, the challenges of coping with an intangible pain and achiness that feels like a garment, a cloak of black cloudy pain draped around my shoulders, covering my body, and entering the bloodstream, infecting my whole mass of muscle tissue with its poison. (There, that's my definition of fibromyalgia...). No matter how many nights I have stayed up wrestling with the Lord, how much I've read and studied about healing, no matter how many prayer services I've attended and times I've been anointed with oil... (and no matter how well I hide my pain, which I am told I am quite brilliant at) ...unfortunately, this cloak remains.

Presently, my blood pressure is quite drastically low, thyroid levels are low, blood count levels, iron levels... all levels are low, and I am "diagnosed" to have adrenal fatigue... Apparently, I have exhausted my ability to produce adrenaline and cortisol...  In general, my body just isn't interested in the "get up and go".

I was prayed over last Thursday night and had the most beautiful time fellowshipping in the Lord.  It was special and lovely and the prayer warriors present believed I would be healed and experience no more pain. But, the very next day, I was terribly disheartened to find that my pain level had sky-rocketed.  I could do nothing but sit and endure for the rest of the day, crying out to the Lord.

I wrestled with Him, How long???? How long, Lord?  Have I not done enough? Do you still feel the need to test my faith?  Have I not prayed enough?  Believed enough?  Served you enough??

But oh boy... How dangerously close that comes to a works theology. It is works theology!! Trying to gain approval from God, appeal to his holiness by my own resume of righteous living... Job did that, too. Uh uh. It's not happening.

In many circles of faith, there is a strong passion for healing! This is so beautiful! I love when people are healed!!! However, 12 years of not being healed has left me with a hint of baggage... I seem to carry the shame of insufficient faith based on my inability to acquire healing from God. And I find that I am greatly humbled in His presence today. I am not smart enough, good enough, righteous enough, faithful enough, or strong enough to earn and receive healing. I've not found the right formula! I've not transcended above my brokenness with supernatural power...

The other thing about healing is that, after death, there's such an awareness of temporal living. Even if I am healed, I am still going to die.  It is all temporal until after death, until the fulfillment of glory, until the full redemption of humankind...

I find that in my life as a widow and single mother, I am trying to reach the standards of both faith and society.  I am striving to be a respectable, Christian grown-up!  Someone who can successfully manage a household, maintain composure at all times, be kind and loving and giving to others... But I'm really just a child.  A child whose world has been destroyed. A selfish and needy child!

I really just need God... Abba, Daddy God.

Daddy, I hurt.  Daddy, I'm tired.  Daddy, I feel sad.  Please help me.  Please heal me, Daddy. Please love away my pain and fear and anxiety... 

My daughter, be anxious for nothing. Stop worrying about your life, your children, your health, your ministry, your home, your finances, your future... Come to me as a little child. Crawl up on my lap and fulfill My standards over your life, standards of freedom and grace and receiving My gift of perfect love.  Allow these things to be fulfilled in your life and all the rest will follow... I have not abandoned you.  I have not left you today.  I have not forgotten about your pain. Come to me and learn about my yoke of peace.  You will find healing in my perfect love and freedom in my grace. 

In returning and rest will be your salvation.  In quietness and confidence will be your strength. (Is 30:15)

Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all. (Luke 18:17)