Furious streams of heated tears fell down my cheeks.
I don't want this anymore. I'm exhausted. I frustratingly thought to myself.
Ashamed at the knowledge God knew my thoughts, I prayed for patience and to be better than myself. To be more like God. To love so effortlessly and so self-sacrificially like God. Like Jesus.
My heart ached in pain.
I never thought of myself as selfish until I became a parent. Motherhood demands all my waking moments and a decent amount of moments I'd prefer to be asleep.
I desire so fervently to give my heart and soul to my children but burn-out hits me ever so often that an emotional release weeps out of my being.
I need to get out more. I need time away from little voices that demand answers to every question imaginable and from little souls that deserve and beg for patience and understanding.
In God's perfect timing and in a few short hours, I heard a man's testimony about how a distracted anesthesiologist's negligence caused him electrical surges of crippling pain from his spine and would in a few short years bring him to eventual paralysis. I watched as his facial expression and body posture mimicked joyful elation and slowly turn to anguish. As rolls of sweat dripped down his forehead, it became abundantly clear the dire physical toll it took for him to stand upon us. His spirit sustained him as though he knew there was a much bigger struggle that needed more healing than the pain that resignated from his core.
He further talked about the struggle he lived with and how his life-changing journey went from bad to worst. The physical toll cost him his employment, his health insurance excluded his condition, and due to the fact that another doctor caused his condition many other doctors were prevented from treating him whatsoever due to their policy. The very threshold of his former life slipped beneath the soles of his feet and solid ground ceased to exist.
He further explained how easy it would have been to be angry and to lean on our own understanding of the ways of God. He confessed he had his moments of frustration and angered questions that simply demanded the answer to, "why?"
Yet, I watched this man stand for over half an hour in excruciating pain to bear witness about how amazing and faithful God is. He glorified God with his spirit and his words helped heal my own.
Sometimes we examine our own pain and hardships so microscopically that it becomes all we see. It becomes a monstrosity in our imperfect minds and often when we compare our own tribulations with others, we begin to see clearly that ours are quite minimal in comparison.
Raising four young children all under the age of six is difficult and my heart will forever go out to a mother of small children. But tonight, I realized how truly blessed I am.
The only hardship God has placed in my life is the joyful exhaustion of raise four beautiful, amazing children.
I do not have an ache that will never cease. I am mercifully free from physical pain. I do not need the assistance of others to care for my basic necessities.
I see now that God has chosen my hands, my own life, to be available. I can either be in need to help. Or I can be helpful. I can be an instrument for others to show God's love. Or I can be an instrument to show other's God's merciful and faithful love.
My job, a mother's job, a Christian's job, is more pressing and consuming than simply raising good, law-abiding citizens.
Our jobs are bigger than that.
We are commanded to shed our old self and demonstrate God's wonderful, patient, merciful love to others, our children exceptionally included.
And yet, the beauty of a commandment is our obedience forces a growth in our hearts and by miraculous design, we become more like the one we fervently admire.
Our hearts mold.
Our souls change.
And we become more and more like our Lord, Jesus Christ.
