The Failed Experiment

I started calling daycares today.  The dreadful one – the one I hated when I sent Eli there as a baby – is the only one that will pick up half-day kindergarten kids.  My three kids will cost me more than half my salary, so we’ll barely be getting by still.  Even with me working full-time.  Caleb will not get to go to a real preschool.  Eli will not get to recharge after a full morning of school.  Violet will probably not nap.  She will be sick once a week.  They will all have to eat the crap that they call food and start habits I do not want them to have.  I don’t think there is anything worse than knowing something is the worst possible thing for your kids and doing it because you don’t have any choice.  I know mothers have to do this every day.  I can’t figure out what I did wrong to become one of them. 

There’s a mountain sitting on my chest.  We are down to three weeks, and the promises of God that I counted on are nowhere to be found.  We have tested him with our tithe, and He has not been faithful.  I took big risks with my job, and He has not been faithful.  I made choices for the upcoming school year and trusted He would provide.  He hasn’t.  I stormed heaven about James’ job, and heaven didn’t budge.  I’ve pursued the work I know in my heart He is leading me to.  I’ve done the work.  It doesn’t matter.  Every time I pass the chalkboard in my kitchen, I breathe in Hebrews 10:23.  “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.”  I spend my every anxious moment singing praises back to God.  I circle back to the Psalm I randomly opened to a few nights ago: “Be still and know that I am God.”  I’ve done my best to seek God’s face, but I can’t say right now that He is good.  I just can’t.  At least not to me.  If He is, I can’t see it.  I have tried gratitude journals, but it seems meaningless to thank God for my children while making plans to completely screw them up.  What kind of steward am I?  Why can’t I figure this out?  Why the hell didn’t I marry for money?

Eli was playing right before bed, and out of the blue he said, “You know that song you listened to in the car?  You know what it says?  It says ‘I cast my cares on You.’  It means God takes care of it.”  I don’t know why Eli said that.  I hadn’t shared with him how I was feeling.  I didn’t even know that he understood the concept.  Maybe he doesn’t.  Maybe that was God speaking.  But how do I cast my cares when reality looms large in my face?  It was one thing to trust and be hopeful with money in the bank and plenty of time.  It is another thing entirely with no money in the bank, with no options, three fleeting weeks, and  husband who asks me every day what my plan is.  Because really, this is all my problem, not his.  I don’t really want to cast my cares because my brain says “why bother?”  I guess if this was my trust experiment, it is over, and it failed. 

                “I remember my affliction and my wandering,

                                The bitterness and the gall.

                I well remember them,

                                And my soul is downcast within me.

                Yet this I call to mind

                                And therefore I have hope.

                Because of the Lord’s great love

                                We are not consumed.

                For His compassions never fail. 

                                They are new every morning.

                Great is His faithfulness.”

                                Lamentations 3:19-23

 I am really want to add a part two to my Psalm.  A part two that rejoices in His faithfulness.  But I am too afraid to hope…I just don’t think those kinds of stories happen to me anymore.  I wish they did.

God is good.  All the time.  I hope.