Without meaning to sound ungrateful or melodramatic, for the past two years its sort of become unclear to me if these are 'hard times' for us, or if they've just become normal.
Certainly, at any given time for Briton and I to have things 'easy' would be foolish to assume or expect. It just doesn't usually work that way for single-parent families. But for several years anyway things were at least 'working'. Life was hard, but survivable. While not always knowing how to do things or what reaction to expect, steps forward were definable and relatively easy to take. Now, having supposedly learned that survival is possible, even for such as we (a single mom raising a son), knowing how things are supposed to work - what I am supposed to do to make it work - (occasional stumbles and mistakes aside) somehow the very fundamental needs for survival that I learned have become so uncertain. And it feels like God is searching for some sort of strength in me that I don't know if He will find... I don't know if its a grace that I am to wait for expectantly, a trust that I did not know existed, or if if IS a faith that He is trying to grow in me. But He IS searching me...
I don't know what I am to understand in this process, what is expected of me. I don't know where I am headed or what I myself will find. All I am left with is knowing and trusting in who He is and who He has been to us in the past. And in the past, He has ALWAYS provided a 'spring in the wilderness', 'a river in the dry desert' like He promised us through Isaiah. A WAY when there is no way. I couldn't even count the miracles that He has performed. I wouldn't even want to try.
Yet I suppose that in every 'child/students' journey it is for the teacher to choose when to remove all sense of foundation and earthly security and see how the child/student flies on their own. What will they do? Where will they go when all the normal avenues for help or escape have gone or have been exhausted?
I admit that for myself, even just missing some of those 'secure foundations' has been enough to make me spin. But life won't stop for an of us to grieve - at least not as much as it feels the matter deserves. And when we do get 'stuck with our wheels spinning', as patient as You are God, You know the right moment to prod us gently on. The world is not nearly so kind and not nearly so understanding...
So I am left to trust that You are in control of that unrelenting, unforgiving monster of a world that presses in all around. But where do I begin again? Where did the hard-but-survivable stop and the virtually/worldly impossible begin? And how do I turn it around again? Is turning it around to 'hard but survivable' again even what I want??? Or is it what YOU want for me??? Somehow - SOMEHOW my heart is saying 'no'.... But what other choice is there for us???
Today, as I look out on a perfect Christmas-Card world, I look back and remember that every step through those deserted wastelands where the miraculous springs were provided has been counted and measured by You. And how one step - the very next one - has been the farthest I could ever look ahead. But there have been so many that I can see stretching away behind...
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