while you wait

Mommy and Daddy were downcast the other morning.  Our troubled son, from whom you can  hide nothing, began acting up quickly.  It wasn't long before we piled everyone in the van and went out to visit a peach and apple orchard, featuring a community garden we love to see.  

Gardens.  I've always been fascinated by their modest beginnings--mere tiny seeds--followed soon by full glory.  Planted in faith, tiny garden seeds speak to me of the parenting journey.  We water, weed, fertilize, yet the final outcome is God's design.  He writes the script--or rather he wrote the script--long before any of us managed our first, in-the-womb somersault.  

So what of us characters?  Why do we pray or hope, if the lines are already written--published, even?

Fellowship.  Pray is fellowship.  In the midst of the fellowship, we are changed, made more lovely than the most perfect, fragrant garden rose.  And we dance, our souls dance, with The Author.  Fellowship with The Author fills our soul, brings us to life.  

If I accomplish nothing more as a parent, I want this one thing for my children.  Fellowship with God.    All other good things will flow from that.  And without that, will there be any good things?   Truly good things?

Sometimes, as mere characters, the path in front of us will look fuzzy.  We don't know what the next chapter holds, or even the next paragraph.

Sometimes the heat is on, beating down relentlessly.  Thirsty times.  Desperate times.  Will we save our house?  Will the cancer heal?

God allows characters, in his already-written stories, to lose their houses...to lose children to cancer.  We can only wait.  Wait to find out what the next paragraph says.  

Really, life is lived in the waiting.  

How do you busy yourself while you wait for your next line?  

This crisis, I've learned what we--our particular family--needs to do while waiting. 

Get outside.  Feel Him there.  See Him there.  Know His power and His majesty.  Know His love and sufficiency.

The elementary school my mother went to.  Long ago abandoned.  Grass overgrown.  Windows broken.

The apple and peach orchard, about twenty minutes from our house, is in the area where my mother grew up--in this modest-income lake community (one of ten children).  They were poor.  But this lake made them rich.  Ice skating all winter...swimming all summer.  God provided for those kids with the work of his hands.  Their fondest memories reside here.  In their early years, they didn't even know they were poor.

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Husband got the job he interviewed for last week--starting Monday.  Twenty hours for low pay, located twenty-three miles (forty-three minutes) away.  Doesn't make sense really.  But we fell behind in the mortgage so we have to take it and be grateful.  I will try to find one child to babysit on my own.  Husband will now be gone most of the time.  We're thinking someone potty-trained and over three would be the safest situation for now.

We wrote husband's father, asking for help so we can catch up on payments.  Hard letter to write.  Now, with the extra hours, hopefully we'll stay on track, barring any more van repairs.  Bank of America--who acquired our loan from Countrywide-- is not acting in good faith with us.  Two modification packets were sent, duplicates of each other, and their system hasn't even begun any processing.  The big banks would rather deal with foreclosures than forbearances or modifications.  They make money on foreclosures, oftentimes, due to new loan fees and other such details.  I fear we will have to call daily and be very aggressive, to make any headway.

In the meantime, I'll be taking lots of neighborhood walks with the kids.  And I'll structure our days so that when the van is available, we all head to a nature spot.  

To be with Him.