A Summary of Despair

Today I told my mom we’d likely be moving in with her in a few months.

I read all the promises in the Bible. That verse in Isaiah that keeps popping out at me. The promises to prosper and not to harm. At one point today, as I pondered what on earth I am supposed to do in this time of waiting, a voice popped in my head and said, “Model faith for your children.” Or something like that. Basically, do the opposite of the daily breakdown thing I’ve been doing.

I just don’t know how to do it. At every turn, a door slams in our faces. Thanks to a plumbing bill and HOA fees and a ripped set of sheets and LIFE, our savings are going faster than ever. James wanted to have a huge heart to heart about the fact that he probably isn’t going to find a job in his injury. I was pissed because I asked him to find a recruiter to help him transition…in JANUARY. And scared, because how to you transition without starting over with a tiny salary? And discouraged, because this has basically undone decades of hard work. We weren’t living extravagantly, but for the first time in our lives, we had a fund to absorb emergencies. Gosh, that was fun. Past tense, of course.

I just can’t see any option or any hope. Today’s verse told me to cry out to God in desperation, and He’ll answer me. I did. Nothing budged. James did, however, suggest buying land and building one of those metal barns to live in. I am not even worthy of a house.

James tried to re-enlist in the Air Force, but he’s been out too long. It really feels like I have an unemployable husband. My flesh screams to flee back to Ohio, find a job that pays 20 grand less than the one I left, and at least we won’t be bankrupt.

I really wanted to lean into hope. To risk-taking. To going after what I thought God wanted me to do…until our universe imploded. Today I just couldn’t do it. Today I was angry, scared, hurt, confused, discouraged. On this gorgeous day with its promise of spring, I alternated between vicious rage and tears. I’m sleep-deprived and I feel completely and utterly alone.

Out of options.

Desperate.

That’s when God shows up, right?

Unless he doesn’t.

I know this isn’t how a person with faith talks, but it’s hard to hope for good things when you can’t help but remember those other times you stepped out in faith and it was a disaster. This might be my worst disaster yet.

Waiting

There’s definitely a reason God calls us children.

I see it every day in my own kids. It doesn’t matter how good I am to them, they doubt me the very next minute.

Take Violet, for example. Never, EVER, have I left her behind…anywhere. And yet, let me get two steps ahead of her on my way down the steps, and she is blubbering and crying real tears and begging me, “Don’t WEAVE me, mommy!” I mean, what part of that looked like leaving? It’s called putting a little space between us so I don’t trip over you and crack my head open. 

And the other day, I told the kids they had to wait until I had all the groceries put away before they could play outside. There was weeping all around. “You NEVER let us play outside, Mommy. We’re NEVER going to get to go outside.”

I’m sorry…are we both speaking English? Because, frankly, I take them outside all the freaking time. And I actually just promised to take them out when I finished with the groceries. I just said, “Wait a minute, OK?”

Based on their reactions, you would have no idea we spent the summer at a pool, lazy Fridays at the museum, and vacations at the beach. You certainly wouldn’t know that I’m in someone’s bed at some point almost every night…because when you need mom, you just need mom. You would think that at some point they’ve been abandoned somewhere, that they’ve gone without meals, that I never, ever hit the drive-thru at Krispy Kreme.

If I can get them to stop and pull their heads out of their rear ends for a few minutes, usually I get some kind of acknowledgement that they’ve overreacting just a bit. But what is it that’s hardwired in us to not trust?

Is it because I don’t always do what they want right away? Maybe. Waiting sucks. I’ll absolutely attest to that. Is it because they forget so quickly? Possibly. I do that, too. Is it because they can’t see signs that I’m working to meet their needs, possibly because they have no idea what that looks like? Yeah, maybe.

The fact is that I’m responding to God in just the same way right now. I can’t stop fixating on the time I took a leave from my job to be with the kids, and we literally drained our whole savings account by the time I skulked back to work with my tail between my legs. That leaves me legitimately panicked because I don’t have that job to skulk back to anymore. I mainly remember long periods of worrying about money and feeling deprivation, which feels extra hard to me because everything we do to save money is, of course, more work for me.

I look at the opportunities that have already fizzled. I look at the damage done by James’ former employer. I look at statistics, logic, and experience, and nothing looks good. At best, maybe he’ll get a new job with a twenty-thousand dollar pay cut. Maybe we can get by, but it’s doubtful. At worst, he won’t find anything at all, and we’ll drag ourselves back to Cincinnati, to live with family while I go back to the classroom. My own understanding looks pretty awful, and I’m angry and scared. I’m buckled in the backseat with huge tears running down my face. This sucks. 

None of this fits the promises in the Bible, as I see them. But it’s hard knowing God seemingly led us down here, knowing how it would turn out. That He let me be pressured into resigning that job I didn’t want anymore anyway, knowing I would need it in nine months. That He let us like it here. That He let us have a taste of financial freedom, only to rip it away.

I know God wants me to trust him, to relax and wait for him. It’s hard when you’re the one who checks the bank account balance, just saying. I can doing everything possible mentally, but faith and peace are wearing thin. I can’t be too hard on my kids when I’m not faring much better in this journey to trust. I want to…I just don’t know how.

Waiting

Part of my strategy to cope with a life that increasingly seems too hard involves making the kids take a little more responsibility. Previous attempts to turn the boys loose on the bathrooms have been disastrous, so I’ve turned my attention to another hated chore: putting away the laundry.

I’ve labeled the drawers in their room. I’ve shown them what to put where. I bring the filled-to-overflowing upstairs and set it right outside their room. They know they have to sort the clothes. Violet’s clothes go in a separate pile for me to put away. The rest need to be in drawers, and the drawers need to close when they are finished.

Most recently, this chore took approximately one hour and forty minutes.

You read that right.

There were screams. Children fell prostrate onto the ground, weeping. There were promises that they could not go on and accusations of terrible unfairness. Caleb quit fifty-two times before the job was declared finished. Also, almost none of the drawers closed on account of clothing that was bunched up and hanging out. I found Violet’s shirts in the boys’ pj drawers. I found underwear with Caleb’s shirts. At least four items of clothing were declared to have no home at all and left strewn on the carpet.

This is why I don’t make my kids do more chores. Once the clothing is put away, I spend the next week proving to Caleb that he does, in fact, have clean long-sleeve shirts. He just needs to look in the sock drawer where he put them.

Then, of course, I have to factor in Violet. For every bit of weeping and gnashing of teeth that her brothers manufacture, Violet possesses an equal desire to “help”. What I can’t get her to understand is that not all “helping” is created equal.

She swoops in on the dreaded chore and starts grabbing articles of clothing. She’s pretty good about taking her clothes to her room and leaving them on the floor. But when she pulls out one of her brothers’ shirts? She likes to toss it across the room for someone else to find. Or she tries to force it in a drawer while Eli and Caleb scream that it isn’t the right spot. (How do they even know? They aren’t doing so great themselves.) Sometimes she hides things under the bed.

The fact is that Violet’s well-intentioned actions turn a chaotic and frustrating experience into a big old mess. The most helpful thing she could do would be to wait – like I told her – until the clothes are sorted into her room. THEN she can help me divvy things up into the right bins and everyone can be happy.

I’m not unlike Violet. Right now, everything in me screams that I need to “do” something. Something more that the editing work I’m doing. It screams that I need to move back to Ohio and look for teaching jobs, because at least I’ll know my babies will have food on the table and medical benefits. It screams that I should definitely hold onto my tutoring gig in our co-op, even though I feel a definite nudging in my spirit to give it up. It screams that I should spend my hours scouring job boards – looking for both myself and my husband – instead of reading God’s word, praying, and fulfilling the already massive pile of responsibilities I face.

Just like Violet, I’m trying to be helpful. Heck, I’m trying to prevent disaster. But none of my efforts will help anything if I haven’t listened to what God wants me to do. Right now, all I know is that I’m supposed to keep writing these thoughts and feelings rolling around in my head. Writing them down helps me process and remember what He’s doing in my heart. I also feel called to continue teaching my kids, to the best of my ability. To being present for them in the best part of their days.

I know I’m supposed to be poring over God’s word, treasuring these words of promise and hope. Other than that, the only directive seems to be “WAIT”. I’m not sure if it’s actually a directive, or if it’s the absence of any other directive…but waiting is all I can do.

Can I tell you how hard it is to wait when your husband hasn’t handled the things you asked him to handle three weeks ago? When you haven’t had any income in two months. When you’re acutely aware that the savings will go fast. When the husband throws a fit every time you spend a penny, and then throws around hairbrained ideas like selling the house and living off the land. When he’s sleeping in, taking naps, watching TV, and going on long runs? I do not want to sit and wait – especially not on him. I’ve spend more than a decade waiting on him to step up and take responsibility. Things do not look any better this time around.

But I watched Violet swoop into the laundry like a tornado and make a huge mess when she could have waited just a few minutes and been very helpful. I don’t want to do the same thing to God. I want to wait until he says, “Now. This is what you can do.”

So I’m waiting. Because waiting on God is better than all the action in the world.

Hide It In Your Heart

When I was little, I spent my Wednesday nights at a church program called Awana. I eagerly memorized Bible verse after Bible verse in exchange for patches and jewels that I attached to my grey and red uniform. I’ll fully confess to being motivated by all the wrong things: I loved the awards on my uniform, the ribbons and plaques, and the recognition for flying through my yearly memory work. I went so fast that I ran out of official club materials and started memorizing verses my mom wrote on index cards. I knew the Bible said I was supposed to memorize God’s word, but I wasn’t exactly motivated by Jesus.

My mom used to talk about Christians in countries where the Bible was illegal, and how they HAD to memorize God’s word if they were going to know what He said. Even during the Cold War, that scenario seemed pretty far removed from my life in Ohio. And as technology has advanced, memorization has fallen out of favor across the board. After all, who needs to spend all that time memorizing scripture when you have the Bible app on your phone or smart watch. As long as you have technology, you have God, right? Google is the new sword of the spirit, seemingly. If you need to know what God says about anxiety, just ask Alexa.

The thing is, the Devil doesn’t seem to attack when my Bible – or my Bible app - is open. No, he weasels his way in during the dead of night, when the lights are off and I’m trying to sleep. He sneaks up when I’m driving, when I’m running, when I’m trying to work on schoolwork with my kids. In this horrible season our family is in, he’s shown up at all the times I’m most vulnerable. He plants a thought, and my mind seizes and runs with it.

What I’m learning as that this is when it’s imperative to have scripture committed to memory. Those verses that I memorized as a ten-year-old are still stored in the recesses of the brain. And over and over again, the Holy Spirit has pulled those words to the forefront of my mind at just the right time. The Spirit speaks scripture to me, but it doesn’t come entirely out of the blue. It’s always scripture that I’ve memorized at some point in my life, whether because I’ve read the passage over and over, perhaps taped it on my bathroom mirror or closet wall – or even because I memorized it at Awana club when I was ten. Often, I had no idea how significant it would be when I was repeating it over and over, carving it into the fibers of my mind.

I can’t help but wonder where my mind would go in the middle of the night, while I’m pacing a path in the music room rug, if I didn’t have God’s words stored up in my heart. As it is, the Devil whispers, “You are finished,” and God’s word whispers, “I make streams in the desert and rivers in the wastelands.” The devil whispers, “This event has destroyed your life. Remember how this turned out in times past?” And God’s word whispers, “Forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past. Look – I am doing something new!” The devil says, “Throw the kids in school and go handle this yourself. Get a job – or two – flee ‘home’ with your head hung low and eke out a living.” And God’s word whispers, “The Lord Himself will fight for you. You need only stand still.”

Of course, I firmly believe God speaks to me in other ways as well. Just a few weeks ago, a friend shared a dream that made the hair on my arms stand up. In all ways it felt like prophecy, but prophecy has to align with scripture. Again, because so much of God’s word is woven into my heart, I was able to measure that prophecy against scripture and know with confidence that the two are aligned.

My own kids go to Awana now. Cubbies earned Violet’s undying affection the moment the uniform appeared. An hour and a half with snacks and games…and a new outfit???  God bless America, that is right up her alley. And my boys, much like me, are enthusiastically tearing through handbook after handbook, loading their uniforms up with bling. Eli can say all three Sparks handbooks without prompting – three years of verses thoroughly ingrained in his being. Caleb isn’t far behind. But even if memorization was hard for them, I’d still make them do it. We are promised that we’ll face times that are hard, and I want them to have the same foundation I was given all those years ago. I want to make sure the Spirit has the same tools to speak to them, late at night and when they first wake up.

The devil will speak all sorts of lies to us. In the last two months, his primary language has been fear, and those fears look absolutely valid. But God says, “I did not give you a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of self-discipline.” That verse has become my sword, a sword I’ve been wielding over and over as fear tempts me to make rash decisions.

We can’t wield the sword of the spirit if we don’t know what it says. Regardless of your age, and whether or not scripture memorization comes with tangible rewards, I’d like to encourage you to commit a verse to memory this week. You never know when you’ll need it.