This morning when I left the house my car temperature gauge read 4 degrees…brrrr is an understatement. As I was driving I noticed every single tree was clothed in icy white snow…every trunk, every branch, every tiny stem. Emalynn said “Mama…look how beautiful the trees are!” I replied flatly “Yeah…they are.” I didn’t want to talk about the trees, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. Normally I would be the one to point out the splendor of the silvery, sparkly winter wonderland but this morning…I felt like those trees….my body the trunk, the branches my bones, and every tiny stem all the nerves from the tips of my fingers, to my toes, to my very soul…stiff, frozen and painfully cold.
I woke up this morning and all I wanted to do was cover up and go back to sleep to escape the reality of pain. This isn’t the kind of typical nagging, annoying pain I can easily cover up like I do every other day…it’s much worse. It’s a “flare up” or “spell” brought on by who know what…a busy weekend, the bitter cold, hormones, a lack of rest….perhaps all of the above. All the thoughts of what I had to do today from beginning to end…from brushing my teeth to the making dinner and giving baths…were haunting me. The feelings of “how am I going to get through this day” were inevitably coming. But…before I could even ask, the Lord knew what I needed.
When I remembered that basket of laundry that needed to go downstairs…it was already gone. When the baby woke up and cried, before I had the chance to even get to him, he was already being changed. “The trash…oh I should take that out” and boom…it was dropped in a neatly tied grocery bag from upstairs to downstairs at my feet where I was standing. And I thought I was the only one who could move that fast! Almost laughing I clambered for my devotional wondering what promises the Lord was going to want me to remember today and do you know what it said? “I can do ALL things through HIM who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13) This was no accident…I needed to read it, to remember it.
The thing about writing this is that if I’m going to be committed to doing it, I need to do it on the bad days, too. It’s easy to praise God on the good days. Even though I know better it’s the bad days that I seem to ask “Why!?” and wonder if I can really handle it all. I can’t help but think of all the “normal” people out there and why I got dealt this hand. The temptation to find any way to “check out” is looming over my head but then those promises come back “I can do ALL things through HIM who gives me strength”. I don’t need drugs, I don’t need to be “normal”, I don’t need to be “perfect”, I need the Lord.
And look at what I’ve been given to help me cope! A husband that with my barely even muttering a word of discomfort buzzed around here like Superman who before he himself had to walk out the door to go to work and provide for us placed my coffee on the counter in-front-of me grabbed me and prayed for me. A little girl who is amazed by the beauty of God’s creation when it’s barely even light enough outside to see it. Two sweet little boys who need their mommy for just about everything. These people in my life are also no accident. It’s all a part of a meticulous plan because God cares about every detail of every second of every day and not just for me…for everyone. I am certainly not the only one who struggles…we all do! God cares about what you face, too!
This is the kind of day I hope my children won’t remember. The kind of day when my fuse is a little shorter, when my energy is almost non-existent and my emotion is dull and flat. But I hope this is the kind of day I will remember. The kind of day that God went before me and knew exactly what I needed before I even did. The kind of day that His promises are to what I cling to get me through. The kind of day that I am so thankful my roots are deeply planted in Christ because He was the warmth my heart needed to break through the bitter cold. I don’t even want to think of where I would be without Him.
Wonders of HIS Love 