Something beautiful happened a few weeks ago. On Mother’s day. My day. It wasn’t significant elsewhere, but in the pew where I sat for church, something happened. Something important and glorious and hard and hopeful. All for me.
I’ve been angry lately. I’ve been angry and resentful and prideful. Angry like a blister that bursts its juice and the dead skin is peeled back to reveal that raw underside. Resentful. Bitter. Some days I’ve carried it better than others and I can almost believe it healed. Other days, reality bumps against the wound, and the pain flares.
Raising my three kids while maintaining the house and making it to work each morning–all while passing the two-year milestones of Eric’s illness and, ultimately, his death…my grief has turned from a hard, true thing into a loud and ugly, isolating lie. The truth of “This is hard and I am hurting” has become “This is harder than God can help” and “I am hurting more than God can overcome.”
This is hard.
I am hurting.
But the part where it has warped into God’s insufficiency…
On this Mother’s Day, the sermon was preceded by a woman’s testimony. She spoke about being faithful all her life, even up through having a boss who purposed to ruin her. He would file grievances against her and even went so far as to tell her he was set on ruining her reputation. The woman said she would take the papers her boss had filed and she would lay them on her bed. Then, on her knees, she would pray, “Lord, if you want me to go through this, if you are with me, I will go.”
These last two years have been the hardest of my life. Parenting my children one day to the next while continuing to draw breath myself has proven to be the most difficult choice I have ever had to make. And without my love to cheer me on…
Many times in the last two years I have felt like God has used me by taking my husband and leaving my children fatherless. As if the Lord has done this to me. Earlier this year I told my counselor, “I feel like God is just using me in a bigger story for other people to learn a lesson from. Like Job. None of this is for me to learn from; I’m just the person He picked.” Even when faced with the possibility of a good day, I’ve mustered up resentment. The few times I experienced joy, I would dismiss it quickly, like, “That can’t be mine. That isn’t meant for me.”
Now, I should share in these hard days, God has drawn me close to Him. I’ve never been more aware of His presence and His promises. But I have very much doubted I would ever see those promises fulfilled on this side of heaven.
Then came that testimony, and that prayer: “Lord, if you want me to go through this, if you are with me, I will go.”
“If you want me to go through this”? How could God possibly want this?
Following the woman’s testimony, our pastor started his sermon asking us about the thorns in our sides. Before he could get far I quipped to a friend sitting next to me, “My whole life is a thorn in my side.” It wasn’t until I said it that I realized how much I’ve come to believe: This can’t get worse but it’s not going to get better. Yes, Jesus is everything I can look forward to on the other side of this life, but as far as here goes, there’s no room for much else. Yes, God will see us through, but He won’t do it here.
Then my pastor brought up Paul, God’s apostle, and how he was given a thorn, by God, and for fourteen years he prayed for God to take that thorn from him. Fourteen years, Paul would come before God and it was his heart’s one prayer request, that God would take that thorn. My pastor instructed us to imagine Paul before the Lord, saying, “Lord, if you took this away, I’d be a better husband, I’d be a better wife, I’d be a better mother…”
Easily, naturally, I thought of this label I wear now, this word widow. How I’ve asked, ranted, and raged at God to change it and restore to me the marriage He took.
I thought of those (recent) nights getting the kids into bed, at my wits’ end, and then Charlie’s voice in the dark asking me, “Mommy, do you still love me?” As if she knows how tired and burnt out Mommy is, as if she knows I’m one minute away from throwing in the towel.
I thought of the class events I’ve had to (recently) attend for Archie, and the resentment I’ve felt standing in a crowd of parents, thinking to myself, “If Eric were here.”
I thought of my two-year-old Sam’s affection for my dad, Papa, and the fact that there is no other father in his life for him to love so deeply.
I thought of my kids’ needs and how they seem to now be extending beyond what I can provide for them on my own.
Lord, if you would take this thorn widow and change it back to wife again, I’d be a better mom. I’d be happier. I’d know joy. I’d know peace.
This is my thorn. It came to me so clearly sitting in that pew that when Pastor Jarrod shared the Lord’s response to Paul, I knew it would be God’s same response to me.
“‘No. Because my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Is it possible, I thought, that God wants this life for me right now? That this role as a solo mom raising three kids under the age of six is something God wants me to experience? Could that be true? And if that is true–which Paul kinda leaves me thinking it is–then wouldn’t it also be true God is going to take care of me in this season? Is it possible God can still give me life? joy? Wait. Can this season with this thorn be better than if the thorn weren’t here at all?
I know it sounds bonkers. It even feels bonkers to me. But in the moment Pastor Jarrod preached this message, God’s grace became a very real and tangible thing for this brokenhearted mama. Same as that woman’s prayer. “Lord, if you want me to go through this, I will go if you go with me.”
I’ve got a God who is taking care of me and my kids. And He’s bringing joy to our doorstep. If He is the one who poured my bucket out in the first place, completely emptied the life I had so content with my husband taking care of me and loving on me, then He is going to be the same One who fills that bucket back up again.
Fill my bucket, Lord. You can leave the thorn. But fill that bucket to overflowing.
And if you have an inkling to hear Pastor Jarrod for yourself, check out some good Truth by clicking here.
a scribble of jo 