Simple Woman's Daybook 10/7

Outside my window...

A vibrant array of color, the leaves delight me as always in this, my favorite season.

Not too fast, I want to shout to the heavens...not too fast.

Some leaves pile on the ground already, thrown asunder by the wind, reminding me that time passes quickly and there's nothing I can do about it. We must hug our little ones and big ones alike, for in no time our children will be off to their first apartment, thrown asunder by a swiftly moving clock life, leaving us to wonder why we ever minded the noise or the mud or all that laundry.

Oh, but to have them all back again, we'll say, tears running down our cheeks.

Snuggle up and savor. Fill them up with all your heart has to offer, and with all the Lord has to offer, through you.

I am thinking...

Why does it have to be so hard? That has crossed my mind numerous times these last couple weeks. We're going to these psychology appointments, but change, progress, is slow. Fear is a force; it must be understood and reckoned with, and we are learning that this is both simple and not so simple, especially when fear behaves like a tsunami, taking reason with it.

I guess I expected that once we were pursuing the solution, all would be well, but it may be many months of abiding in Christ. Why was I thinking I had the golden egg of solutions?

Because when is a psychologist really a solution? A solution to what? Life is as messy as it is beautiful and the Lord is my shepherd and my psychologist...I shall not want and everything I need is right there in the down payment on my inheritance...the Holy Spirit...talking to me through my prayers and through my Bible reading and through my hardest moments.

This guy behind the desk in the medical building? He can only do what the Lord wills. He's one of God's graces for us in the grand scheme of anxiety disorders, but he's not the answer to having enough endurance...to finishing the race before me. God has already equipped me with everything I need. My work, my job, is to be thankful, obedient, and available as a servant.

I am thankful for...

~ a reading program for dyslexics available to homeschoolers (reading is a grueling process for the dyslexic and one I was not privy to understand before). I don't know what I would have done without the All About Reading curriculum. I decided to use it for both Mary and Beth, though at two different levels. I wanted to prevent any problems with Beth as she becomes a reader, since dyslexia is highly heritable.

~ cooler days--especially mornings and nights, hot cocoa, baking smells in the kitchen again, pumpkin foods, apple foods, lots of homemade soups

~ a marriage that perseveres. The anxiety disorders in the children are taking their toll on our marriage, as is common when children have stressful conditions, but this marriage is solidly based on commitment, not on happiness, so grueling times like this do not shake its foundation. Praise God for that. A marriage that has seen hard times can be a testimony, and right now I am holding on tight for the glory of God. Marriage and raising children is not so much about us, but about the glory of God. Singleness can be the same, though through different avenues of bringing glory.

~ a reorganized, centralized homeschooling area for quick access to the books and assignment sheets we need throughout the day

~ a reorganized laundry-folding and storing system that leaves Mommy only folding the parental laundry. These changes have proven very helpful. The children each have their own standard-sized laundry basket containing their clean pajamas, sweats, and socks/underwear to fold and put away, plus a few towels and washcloths each. I hang everything else straight from the dryer.

~ a four-year-old Down Syndrome boy joined my church Sunday school class this last week and I really wanted to take him home with me...Peter did too. I love special needs children.

~ Sunday school children to love, though I do miss holding the babies in the nursery. I am only with the 4-year-olds now.

~ Our new church is the best church I've ever attended. We've been there about 7 weeks now I'm guessing. It isn't the AWANA church I wrote about, but a different church I found online about twenty minutes from us. I can't put my finger on what is different, but I want to say...they're just very humble, average guys (2 pastors and a youth minister) trying to minister to us, but very talented at it too. They don't view ministry through a staff vs. church member lens. Everyone is equal--there are no cliques. We're all messed-up sinners in need of grace and love and wisdom, pursuing it together, and trying to be it together, for the glory of God. That's what it feels like there and I love it and it's unanimous...the whole family loves it!

For a long time I've wanted to find such a church home, but I came to the conclusion you bloom where you're planted and make the best of it, finding all the good you could. This feels like such a joy finally...my spirit is happy there. There are tons of babies and toddlers and families--it's teaming with life the second you walk in the doors. A young church with a sprinkling of us old folks, who are all happy to look around and laugh at the joy of it all.

I am wearing...

flannel pajamas and slippers because it's late night. I had to wait until all my school prep was done before I could write tonight (as well as the dishes done and the socks and underwear put in the dryer).

I am reading...

My Bible, Little Pear from the girls' Core B curriculum (an amazingly cute and quaint classic I missed as a child and adult), Overcoming Dyslexia, Talking Back to OCD

Scripture to share... Hebrews 12:1

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us

The Unsuspecting Psychologist

How many times have I typed it here over the years?  That what matters most to the Lord is drawing people to Himself--saving souls and more souls?

2 Peter 3:8-9 But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

My anxiety-ridden children--whose anxieties are exhausting and fill me with anxiety, and vice versa--see a psychologist every Monday. We all like him, and in fact Mary had her first full session this last Monday and said afterwards, "Mommy, I really love that man." Before she left, she told him, "I'll miss you." 

He'd given her a science lesson about thunder and lightning and showed her many pictures of beautiful displays of God's glory in the skies, also explaining that lightning hits the highest objects around, if anything at all--rarely your house.

He grew up in tornado alley, he told her, and never saw a single tornado. In fact, when his home area in Ohio has a tornado warning, his family goes into the basement and he sits in the garage with the garage door open and tries to find a tornado in the sky--he so wants to see one--but still, he never has!

He asked her what her worst fear was. "A tornado running down the house and killing everybody", she answered.

"If this happened, which is very, very unlikely, where would you go?", he inquired.

"I would go to Heaven and be with Jesus forever." she answered.

"Yes. And your dolls and toys would be strewn all over the street, and children would come and be very happy to play with them, so is a tornado really all that bad?" he countered.

He's an orthodox Jewish psychologist (who also has OCD and suffered with it as a child) who loves God and intersperses things about God into his counseling sessions.

But he doesn't know Jesus. He upholds what my children say about Jesus--and they all have something to say about Him--but he doesn't personally know Jesus the Messiah.

It isn't only one of my children going to this man who loves God but not the Messiah. It's three of them. How rare is that? Three siblings needing therapy for anxiety? So this man has two hours of exposure to Christian children speaking from their heart about Jesus as the Spirit leads, every Monday.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

There was a purpose to the worst summer of my life? A purpose to me feeling like we were a failure as a family because who has this many children suffering from anxiety? I didn't tell you about all the embarrassment, shame, self-doubt, panic and failing faith that characterized my summer--or did I, sort of?

I'm sure I have a lot to learn--that we as a family have a lot to learn. Like how to abide.

But there is another purpose too, I strongly feel, having to do with an unsuspecting psychologist who doesn't know yet that God loves him so much, he's going to plant the truth of the gospel into the case file of the 7-year-old who's afraid of thunder, lightning, tornadoes and loud booms that just might be bombs. With a little help from her brothers.

When she said, "I really love that man," it could just as easily have been the Lord talking.

Jesus loves us! He really does, and when things are hard and down right messy, and we're ashamed and scared and we don't understand how it could get this bad, we can't lose hope. We don't know the outcome, but we do know the purpose. We do know what the Lord cares about.

We just have to care about souls too, and we'll be okay. We have to remember what he has planned for those who love Him.

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

1 Corinthians 2:9

However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,
    what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
    the things God has prepared for those who love him—

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When God Gives An Assignment

Forgive me while I write myself into an understanding of my current assignment from the Lord. My approach to these assignments, and my expectations, don't always match His, so in writing it out I hope to relinquish control and drop any personal agenda, and just be His instrument.

Dear me...I don't know where to begin about my 12-year-old neighbor girl situation. The exact day I had decided to begin "counseling" Miss L and have her over to bake with Mary, her mother had a friend over for a quaint little Friday afternoon "drinking party".

Miss L came to our door about ten minutes after the school bus dropped her off (yes, our neighborhood finally has a school bus running again--after two years!). I didn't need to ask Miss L. how things were going or figure out how to approach the topic of alcohol abuse in her home. Visibly stressed, she relayed that her mother's friend was over with "a pack of reds", and she feared what would happen because this friend "was bad news and already had her kids taken away from her".

So, my mind began racing and everything I had thought about saying, I couldn't think of, because: "Wow, God, I didn't expect this opening!"

And right away I wondered...should I ask what "reds" is or just assume since it has "pack" in front of it, that it's alcohol?

Trying to seem as though I hear such news everyday (non-judgmental, I mean), I told her as much as I could remember of my little prepared speech, "I was going to tell you that when I was growing up my mother drank, and so I know what that is like. You can talk to me about it when you need to. Please know that it's not your fault, and you can't solve it. The Lord is always there for you, even when there is turmoil around you. Go to Him for comfort and pray for healing. Please come here if you ever feel unsafe."

I told her there were books from an organization called Alateen that I was going to get to go over with her, written for teens who are dealing with family members who drink.

Her grandfather, I learned, does not drink now, but drank a great deal before his grand kids were born. Miss L's grandmother's recent passing is a stretch for her grandfather's apparent 12-year sobriety, so let's hope the Lord can keep him strong (there are no Christians in this family, but Miss L went to AWANA with us for a year, and has been to Bible Studies here, but her life has been too erratic for us to know where she is spiritually).

The grandfather works second shift so he was not there during this drinking party, nor does he know the mother has been doing such things during his absence. Miss L said if he did know, he would kick her mother out.

Today I asked how the rest of the evening went last night, and Miss L said the mom's friend went out to get more "reds" and was going to smoke marijuana in their house too, but Miss L got her mother to lock the door and not let the friend back in. I guess this worked only because the mother was annoyed with the friend anyway.

Boldly, I told Miss L that although it seemed like a scary thing to do, the best thing for her mother would be for Miss L to tell the grandfather what was going on. "No way. We would get kicked out."

"Would your grandfather care for you if your mother couldn't live there anymore?, I asked (not remembering the second shift).

She said she was nearly old enough to babysit for her 8-year-old brother--and wanted to run a babysitting service--but not yet. Her grandfather couldn't take care of her right now.

My mind is thinking and considering, because obviously this is a very unsafe situation. I would really like Miss L to tell her grandfather the truth. She has taken on the parent role and her mother has taken on the child role, and this is robbing Miss L of her childhood entirely, which will have repercussions for a lifetime. A single mother drinking also puts her young daughter at risk for rape, depending on whom the mother allows around the house.

Right away I'm praying that the grandfather comes home unannounced at just the right time, because Miss L's mother needs to lose her financial support in order to hit rock bottom and have the custody of her children put at risk.

Parts I'm Wrestling With:

~ The Grace of God 

I prayed with both Miss L and her brother before they left our house Friday evening, asking for protection and more. And you know, it seemed like so little, as I sent two kids off to a possibly drunken situation.

In therapy on Monday I brought up with my kids' psychologist that my son Paul feels sad about my headaches and sister Beth's arthritis--almost guilty that we are suffering with things that he doesn't have to deal with. Paul is an anxious worry wort who takes on the weight of things too much, and between the psychologist's comments and my comments (mom and the psychologist work as a team) Paul learned that he has to trust God to provide the hurting with grace--that God is powerful enough to do this, and loving enough. We can be instruments of grace, but when our part is done, we have to trust God to do the rest. We can live in peace, knowing that we can't even imagine or see all the ways God will be there for people we know who are hurting. Sometimes we're privileged to hear about the ways God provided grace, and sometimes not, but we have to trust that God is there, always, loving and comforting.

As I wrote above, after going home last night, Miss L convinced her mother to lock the door on the "bad news friend" before the night got any worse. Isn't this an example of the grace of God?

I don't know what the Lord will do, or when, but I can rest (I can abide), knowing that this is not my problem to solve.

~ Putting Boundaries in Place

I must say, this whole business depressed me. The Lord had to remind me that as I help people, I must have boundaries in place. Their problems can't consume me or take away my joy. I could and should still have a pleasant evening with my own family. Soul joy should prevail, even though there are horrors in the world. This is a difficult concept for the tenderhearted among us to swallow, but it's truth.

People who have come from alcoholic homes have particular trouble with boundaries. As possible enablers growing up, they didn't know where one family member ended and another began. Everyone's identity got mixed up with the drinker's identity. Therefore, when adult children of alcoholics try to help someone (they're over-represented in the helping professions--nurses, teachers, therapists, clergy, doctors), they can lose themselves in the process.

So I must help with boundaries in place, always.

~ The Cost is Great

And then there's this. Miss L is extremely high-maintenance. I can take her in small, forty-minute max doses. Although I have a son with ADHD, that just doesn't prepare me--or perhaps it leaves me too exhausted by 3:30 PM--for the traits Miss L displays as part of her own ADHD. Her attention span is very short--she switches activities five minutes after the kids get something set up, and she doesn't offer to help clean anything up. She has learning disabilities that can be problematic during playtime, which she undoubtedly feels she's got to cover up, and she's ODD (stands for oppositional defiant disorder, but it just means she's very pushy and persistent and bossy--she's got to be told no many times before she'll drop an idea).

When she's here, it's at great cost to my personal sanity. When she's gone, I often feel...now what good did that possibly do, for it was so chaotic and how well did I even hide my annoyance?.

For example, the baking was a disaster. Miss L's ADHD is worse than I thought in terms of planning and concentration and follow through. She had something in mind she wanted to make, but had no recipe in hand. She began ordering me around for ingredients, planning on winging it entirely, but having no idea even of proportions in cake recipes.

I gently steered her toward our favorite (and easy) chocolate cake recipe, and because she wanted to do this project with my girls, I left them alone with the recipe, the ingredients, and the equipment. That was not enough support, because what came out of the oven did not resemble cake. Noticing it seemed thin before I put it in the oven, I asked her to read over each item on the recipe, to see if she forgot anything. She said she did everything.

The frosting I let her put together herself, and that ended up being a waste of money on ingredients too.

Granted, my girls were on chairs on both sides of her, and her brother and my boys were playing in the living room, so maybe that was too much stimulation for the amount of concentration needed.

Every girl interested should be taught to bake. I see it as a gift we can give young girls--a handmade, homemade gift they can bless their own families with, enjoyed on milestone occasions like birthdays and holidays. The wholesome flavor and aroma of homemade cake can be part of beloved family memories.

So, we have to start from scratch, and because I can't do much about the noise and interference from the other kids, I think I will have the ingredients already measured out, and have Miss L and my girls just combine them and do the beating and such--at least to start.

~ Are My Offerings Good Enough...Or Enough At All

When she's gone and I feel guilty for having watched the clock in anticipation of my "freedom", I feel like it's all a waste. Surely she can see the tension in me? How can any love I want to show come through, when the various strikes against her distract me from the very thing I want most to do--extend Christian love and grace and fellowship and teaching? I love her, but she's hard to love.

I feel like I have these meager loaves and fishes to offer, and I'm not even offering them with a pure heart. I don't have enough patience. I don't have enough time. I'm too nervous. My faith is too small. I wish she would bathe more and dress modestly and quit dying her hair with those store-bought bottles every other week, and what is her mother thinking anyway--can't she figure out why she's being bullied? And why is the exterior even an issue to me? I can't change those things--every family has their own rhythms and tastes and habits.

I'm thinking about how big the problems are, and about how many different problems there are, and it's overwhelming. What Kingdom contribution can I make here? Here is a girl with so many strikes against her, from a tough upbringing, to bullying at school, to teachers who are annoyed with her, to multiple disorders/disabilities, to a grandmother who has passed away.

Where will this little girl will be in 10 years, at 22. Will Miss L love her mother and have contact with her? Will Miss L love the Lord? Will she be working in a job she loves, or be finishing school, or be a happy Mom with a loving husband?

Lord, you are mighty. I give you now all these variables. They are not mine to contemplate, or to try to solve. Help me to love, to counsel, to give of my time, to provide a safe haven. Help my whole family to provide a picture of normalcy for these children. Multiply, magnify, and sanctify my imperfect offerings.

And thank you for the reminder that not one of us is any better than another.

A Lesson in Abiding

1 John 4:1
By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.

The end-of-August tree-climbing accident is drawing to a close, thank the Lord. My son got his neck brace off on Monday. He can read two school books (historical fiction and non-fiction history) as long as the print is not too small, and he can do about 5 to 10 math problems, before getting a headache. That's progress!

It didn't look like we would be this far even a week ago; I'm very encouraged and also a little ashamed.

Did I abide in the Lord well during this crisis? Did I display the peace of the Holy Spirit, or did I search for information on concussions and neck sprains, wanting to know how long...how long...how long will he be like this, Lord?

I failed to abide. Abide means, in the KJV Bible dictionary, to rest or dwell.  I did not rest in the Lord. There were certain moments I got it right, but mostly I felt overwhelmed at multiple crises occurring simultaneously--it was almost like I was being set up for failure. 

Does the Lord teach us to abide by giving us one difficulty at a time? 

Well, no, I don't think so. Because wouldn't we be able to deal with one thing at a time pretty well? 

The Lord seems to teach us abiding by flooding us--thereby teaching us that we never had any control in the first place, so why not put our trust in (and spend adequate time with) the One who said: 

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Revelation 22:13

As we complete the final stretch of the tree-climbing disaster, and start therapy for some nerve-wracking childhood anxieties that have given me the most unpleasant summer on record, I can honestly say, abiding is easier than worrying about (and researching) what-ifs.  

And abiding strengthens and frees us to do God's work. 

Think of worrying as being in chains in prison. You're grounded. 

During our crisis, our 12-year-old neighbor girl, Lexie, had one of her own. Her grandmother died suddenly of sepsis. Lexie became, not surprisingly, very needy, visiting here daily, crying, asking to come over for dinner almost nightly, and wanting to come in the house after school. I love that young lady, but I don't love her ODD, which drives me to tug at my own hair and lament the sin curse and all that it entails.

I comforted Lexie and her brother and we sent a meal, and we prayed and I listened to every report on her grandmother's condition, but the whole while I was falling apart with worry over what was going on here, and very stressed over my son's deteriorating behavior because of not having any structure or routine anymore (concussion brain-rest).

I felt awful that I was doing little to meet our young friend's ever-growing needs, especially after she revealed the fear that her mother would commit suicide. Lexie revealed that once when her mother was drunk, she talked about committing suicide (first mention of any drinking in the family). Based upon another comment uttered to Peter, I figured out that the grandfather and Lexie's mother both drink, and that they probably lost their enabler with the grandmother's passing.

The same day my son could read a chapter in a book again without a headache (and I experienced intense relief), the Lord spoke clearly about Lexie. Your own mother abused alcohol and you're still reeling from it. Lexie's mother abuses it too, and Lexie needs you to help her understand it. Soon, she will look to boys to comfort her. Show her the right way. Leave the outcome to Me, but put your neck out there and try. Let her know it's not her fault. She is not to be ashamed. She is not to try to solve it. She is to look to Me for comfort. 

For a few weeks Lexie's been asking to bake brownies with Mary. They like to play pretend cooking outside with pieces of plants and flowers and plates and utensils, but thus far I've said no about the baking due to being so overwhelmed with all I had to do (we started school last week and the lessons take all day now with chores starting late). But tomorrow, I will invite her for baking and ask how things are going and slowly begin to counsel her, one baby step at a time.

I will abide--I will rest in the Lord, because doing so strengthens me and frees me to do the Lord's will in my world. 

The Lord Jesus did not die on a tree so that I could focus on:

~how clean my house is and what Lexie will think of the messes, 

~how long it will take before my son can do a full school load after a concussion, 

~how long it will be before my son's infected mosquito bite looks improved, 

~whether superbugs will ever develop for which we have no effective antibiotics, 

~how long we will have to continue with speech class, 

~how long my daughter will look at the skies and cry about the dark clouds

~how long my son will be worried about throwing up from sugar, fat, heat exhaustion, germs...

There are so many things, so many bunny trails I can get lost on. And they all distract me and the enemy is so happy, isn't he? He loves it when I Google mosquito bites turned staph infections for 60 minutes (yes, I took him in and it is healing). God's Kingdom is certainly not growing when I am preoccupied with what might happen. So much easier to take three deep breaths and exhale...abide...abide...abide...

Your turn. When was the last time you had a lesson in abiding? Was it a time of flooding--many things going wrong at once, during which you learned you never had any control in the first place? Did you spend more time in the Word? Did you just sit quietly at the Lord's feet and listen? How did you abide?

When We Let Go We See God

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength …the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show compassion…Blessed are all those who wait for him!” Isaiah 30:15a and 18

For nearly seven years now I've been at a keyboard typing about the sufficiency of God---His power to fill us and complete us, even heal our brokenness. 

But only this year have I come to terms with my own brokenness. 

For years I said my mother was a "problem drinker", if I said anything at all. Alcoholism was too shameful to admit about one's family--so I never even admitted it to myself. She never drank every day and I guessed that was part of the definition--someone who was perpetually drunk. 

My denial kept me in the dark about my own brokenness--and my whole growing-up nuclear-family dynamic and the brokenness surrounding it. 

If only.

If only.

If only I had known. If only I had known and had gotten counseling as a young single girl just out of the house.

I had so much emptiness and so much hurt and so much crying out for love, and I never knew it wasn't normal. I never knew what normal was and I still don't.

The children's director at our new church--the one who got me to teach the four year olds every other week, which is too much--invited me to the Monday Night Ladies Bible Study. She said we could sit together there and maybe have coffee--reaching out in love maybe because we're both about the same age in a church full of young women, and we both have four children, though her youngest is 13. 

But I don't know how to relate to anyone anymore. My situation is hard to explain and I don't want to let people into it in case they might pity me, and yet I wouldn't feel right listening and being stingy with sharing back either--that isn't true friendship, but more condescending. 

Being gone every Monday night would be a big stretch and would probably just add stress anyway, since the kids' anxiety is worse at night. It's hard to tell people that you don't have any time because your kids have so many mental problems that you're overwhelmed coaching them, and overwhelmed by their doctor's appointments and their learning disabilities and your husband's and son's ADHD and your headaches and brokenness and money troubles.

My husband ran into an old pastor of ours who shared that his twenty-something daughter is living at home temporarily and she's a serious alcoholic. The whole family is trying very hard to keep her away from alcohol until she can get into a treatment center soon, but somehow she keeps finding alcohol. She married young to someone addicted to drugs, and it ended badly, with her addicted to alcohol. He was nearly crying as he told my husband his burden. He said he was always busy with the ministry and wasn't the best dad. He partly blames himself for her situation. 

When husband came home and told me this story, I was devastated for this pastor. It struck an arrow through my heart, this man thinking he was choosing something good but all along, the enemy was attacking his home. It saddened me for quite a while, and I don't want to sadden someone else with my own brand of heaviness, so I feel like I have to keep it all in and avoid getting into new friendships--because who could understand anyway and so many might judge and just say, "Why don't you just go to work and put the kids in school to ease the financial burden?"

We are praying for the pastor and his family and I am glad he shared, don't get me wrong, even though it felt so heavy. We should collectively try to share the sin curse and hold one another up in the Lord.

The bottom line is, relating to people and sustaining intimate relationships, having normal self-esteem, and even having fun, is hard for people from alcoholic families. Normalcy is a mystery. I'm broken and alone and it feels safer and easier to be alone. Staying alone has been my modus operandi for years.

And yet that isn't what God designed for the Body of Christ. I finally get that I'm not living out my faith properly. My safe way is the wrong way.

I read some Ann Voskamp today. A man, Gordon, sat down to lunch with her and asked her how she sees God. She had trouble answering and told him she really doesn't have any answers, just questions, herself.

She thought about his question for days, and an answer came to her out in nature, as she and her daughter picked Chinese lanterns out in a field. She wrote:

I am not thinking of how to see God when I untangle the vines, snapping off a long string of dangling brilliance. I am not thinking of revelation as I peel back the orange sheath to the blazing seed sphere inside. The seed is soft.

It’s when I pick up a vine of browning lanterns and the flaming bead of orange inside a necklace of lanterns rattle. That’s when I think of it. That’s when I think of it only. That’s when I want to stammer out something to Gordon, something about this here.

I kneel down into the grass. The ground is cold. I finger one lantern hanging. It’s this: a delicate skeleton. It’s this: I can see right into the lantern.

It’s in the filigree of fracturing that I can see His flame. That I can see the light.

I remember Guatemala. I remember kids scrapping at the table. I remember, know, all my ugliness.

We see God when we let go. When we let go of the visible, papery skin that surrounds our moments, then we see the sacred jewel gleaming just underneath everything. I want to tell Gordon this.

We see God when we let go. So will I see God redeem my brokenness when I let go of my shame? When, like the broken pastor, I can talk about my burdens whenever they feel heavy--and not just anonymously here? When I stop denying that I'm such a mess and that I need a Redeemer and friend?

Fear stops me. Pride stops me. I want to hide, like Adam and Eve with their fig leaves in the Garden of Eden. Vulnerability is too scary and who can I trust and what if they judge me and their judgement hurts for days and weeks and just adds to my burdens?

Seven years I've written it...that God redeems our brokenness, that he heals and makes us whole. Can he make me the same as an adult who grew up in a home where no addiction existed? Can he give me the ability to have fun, grow a fulfilling friendship, and not be ashamed of my life in all its messiness?

He makes all things new. I must trust that and give him my newly acknowledged brokenness on a platter, served up with humility and hope.

My goal in wanting wholeness is to pass it on to my children. For I fear I'm passing on, without any addiction being present, the brokenness of my upbringing. The alienation, the shame, the extreme seriousness. 

I'm fairly certain my children will leave us knowing the Lord Jesus. Hallelujah. That is enough in itself. That is a triumph over previous generations. But dare I ask even more for them? I want personal wholeness for them as well. The ability to laugh often and well, the ability to trust and experience intimacy without shame, the wisdom to draw boundaries, the courage to take risks---the fullness that allows them to change the world for Christ.

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength …the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show compassion…Blessed are all those who wait for him!” Isaiah 30:15a and 18