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Behind “Trail”
I was having an epiphany in my crisis ramblings to my husband. “That’s why people should live next to grandma! Somebody gotta help rock this baby to sleep while I clean up the dinner dishes. No wonder my life doesn’t work in this day and age with everyone living so far away from each other.”
I was on the right track, but my crisis got deeper.
It seems to me that the important moments in life are the most secretive. Yeah, we hear it said, “the real you is who you are when no one is looking,” but even more than that – the real stuff of life is what you have in your heart at the end of the day that no one sees but you.
When discouragement has knocked you down, fear has you in a rut of setback after setback, or just plain ignorance has you in a fog, in the quiet at home, life is worth living for the few treasures that you still have: knowing you’re forgiven, knowing that God has brought friendships into your life in which you have both given and received, knowing you went for something even if you failed.
We don’t have much patience to look deep into our piles of clutter and mess to discover if “those treasures” (above) are standing the test of time.
Instead, we let our surroundings tell us whether or not our lives are valuable or worthwhile and dwell on memories. And when we feel like they are all we have, we wrap them around us and hide.
My mom died when I was 29. I miss her, and I’ve often feel like I had a right to a pity party. Going through the hardest decade of my life so far (raising small kids) I have often felt like, how am I supposed to do this without her?
One day in a prayerful fit of despair, I huffed and puffed through gritted teeth the wretched but honest thoughts of my heart, “If my mom were here, she’d buy me a set of dishes that matched; she’d haul me to Hobby Lobby’s 40% off day to get a picture for that wall; she’d give me all her towels because she’d want to buy new ones.”
Realizing that it only spirals downward to wish her back, I had nothing left to do but draw upon the promises of God. My cries turned to declarations that day. “Lord, I am not going to go there, because if I do there’s no coming back. She’s not coming back from the dead now. You are good and good to me, and you will send SEVEN (more than enough) women who will see me and love me and treat me just like my mom did! I will not lack for anything!”
And what do you think happened? That year, one very special woman began to come to my house … DAILY. She’d say that her prayer was to be the hands and feet of Jesus, and He would tell her to come to my house every day. She loaded my fridge, bought me storage containers, bought me dresses for events…like a mother to me. She’d rock my baby while I made dinner in the corner in my living room just as I had been imagining and thinking. She’d come to the door and say, “Yoo hooo,” in the very tone my mother had always done. She was a very specific gift from the Lord to me. Everything I spoke in that desperate prayer came through her during one of the most stressful periods of my life, the year after baby number 3.
I am not alone.
When I cried out to God and called upon his promise to be all in all, to meet every need. Specifically. He answered me with his Body.
Understanding that God is with us, believing and not doubting so that we will draw upon the well of resources He has provided is not an easy revelation. In Christ, the fullness of God is in my spirit, but by faith, we are able to experience it “in the flesh” for real!
No matter how lonely the trail or hard the terrain… we
are.
not
alone!
Trail
On a long dark forgotten trail
Oh I found the tree of life
Dusty broken lost and lonely there
But I felt so alive
A few towns, find a city there
No one cares or knows my name
Stop awhile raise a family there
But this world is not my home
Help me understand
You are my home in this world
I am not alone in this world
On a long dark forgotten trail
Oh a shell of life is gone
Growing up now I know, I am not alone
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