Yesterday my husband and I sat down for our "weekly" husband and wife meeting, and he asked how I was doing. It was the wrong part of the day. I was tired and hungry, and Edmund was crying and wouldn't even nurse. I could barely think past my own grumpy attitude and I was feeling hopeless about ever being able to have a peaceful routine with such an unpredictable baby. I told him I wasn't writing the blog anymore (to which he quickly and rightly replied I was too emotional to make a decision at the moment), and I spouted off my ugly feelings about how God must not want me to succeed, and that by me reading a book about order and feeling drawn to it, He was just dangling something in front of me that I could not have. Basically, I lost it. After I ate a granola bar and Clayton got Edmund to sleep, I remembered that I love my life and God and that God is good.
I am so weak, and moments like three o'clock in the afternoon when it is almost time for Agnes to wake up, I feel desperate for a nap, Edmund has not given me a break, and my to do list has only a couple of checks next to it, that I often slip into despair and resentment--despairing feelings of how the world is crashing down and resentment towards whomever I can find to resent, myself if I can't think of anyone else! It never is the end of the world and God never really has stopped caring about me, and He is not out to get me. My lack of joy in these moments is not due to anyone else's or my own failures, or even due to Edmund's erratic schedule. My lack of joy is due to my lack of God and my too much of self.
Ironically, I become discouraged that God is not helping me to succeed, when really, I want to succeed so that I can be a holy woman. If I do not do it for God, then what is the point? And if He does not give me relief in certain areas, He is either trying to teach me something through it, or I am not doing my part. I believe that deep down, I don't really always want to do good things for God. I want to do good things for myself. I want to do good so that I can feel good about myself and so that I can feel like others have a reason to admire me. Even confronting this does not automatically make my priorities fall into place. I need Christ, and I need Christ even in order to recognize that I need Him. I need Him to rub mud in my eyes and to open them.
I recently read a different translation to a popular Bible verse: "I have the strength for everything through Him who empowers me." -Phil. 4:13 This wording struck me. I have the strength for everything. I have the strength for the big and the mundane, the expected and not expected, the desired and the undesired. I have the strength for it all. IF Christ empowers me. If I do not have Christ, the One Who gives me strength, than I do not have the strength for everything. I do not even have strength at all. I cannot succeed, and even were I able, my success would have no purpose. Christ is the answer, above all, to all of my striving and wanting and hoping in my daily life. I can only pray not only that He would increase in me, but that my thirst for Him would increase, would become a fire burning in my bones, driving me only towards Him who is my allotted portion and my cup. (Psalm 16:5)
No comments:
Post a Comment