If I ever believed that I could do it all, I was humbled
last month when I tested positive for the flu. I woke up one morning with a
really high fever and convinced myself that there was a fluke with my
thermometer.I did decide to go to the
doctor and when they asked if I had received the flu shot this year, my
response was “the flu? What?” Even with a fever, the flu was nowhere on my
radar.
I’m a mother to four kids and they all go to public school.
If the flu enters a family of six, it’s usually not through the mom, right?
But, that’s actually what happened. It was a rough week. And then ten days
later, I was back at the same doctor’s office, this time with a positive strep
test.
March was a hard month. I was sick for more of it than not.
And in some uncomfortable ways, I learned that I do have limits and I was
operating beyond them. The good of being in that place is that you are kind of
forced to be dependent, to recognize you can’t do it all and that sometimes you
have to allow others to care for you. It’s hard to be prideful when you are so
weak.
The idea that I might have been juggling more than I could
handle was one that several friends and mentors had been suggesting to me for
quite some time, but once I realized it was true, I didn’t really know what to
do about it.
I never intended to be in that place where I took on too
much, but it ended up that way. The reality is that I don’t have a lot more on
my plate than I’ve had during other seasons of my life, but in this particular
one, I haven’t handled that load as well. Being physically slowed down due to
sickness was kind of the wake-up call for me: I have limits. I am certainly not super mom.
And that’s okay, because she doesn’t really exist.
My maternal heart has been on an emotional roller coaster
for the last year and a half. I think it’s one that most foster and adopt moms
can relate to and many others as well. The stress level in our home has been
really high at times and it has led to a lot of tears. In contrast, the joy I
feel when I watch my kids play a game at the table or I receive a sweet picture
that my youngest draws of 3 yellow-haired kids and a brown girl is
indescribable. The highs are higher and the lows are lower than they were
before. And over time, the roller coaster of that has taken a toll on me.
Something that has become very clear recently is that, as
long as I was only doing stuff that was safe, it was easy to feel good about
myself.
When we aren’t stretched and stepping out into uncomfortable
things, we don’t get to see those areas in our heart that really need to be
tweaked. And four years ago I started naively praying a prayer that turned out
to my rock my world. Because, you see, God doesn’t always answer our prayers in
the way we think they will be answered. And I was praying from a safe and somewhat
arrogant place. I wanted God to use me. What I didn’t want, however, was to
have to go through the refining process that was necessary in order for me to
be effectively used.
But, as it turns out, that’s where I find myself today. My
comfortable little bubble has changed and morphed as my kids have grown older
and I don’t quite have the same safety net there to catch me when I fall or to
encourage me when I’m feeling vulnerable and exposed. I have a couple of
friends that I often lament to, “whyyyyy can’t we just go back to how it used to
be?” Those “used to be” days didn’t always feel easy at the time, but they did
feel safe.
The prayer I prayed so fervently and whole-heartedly
actually had nothing to with foster care or adoption and it began to be
answered before those things even became part of the equation. But when I took
risks with some new things, and said some hard “yeses”, what I learned about
myself is that I’m not nearly as cleaned up as I wanted to believe I was. There
was a lot more weeding that needed to take place in my heart than I was aware
of.
Refinement is so uncomfortable, and yet it is because God is
gracious that he does not let us hold onto those things that cannot hold.
Eventually the things we are clinging so tightly to get stripped away, and that's when we are able to find true joy. It’s a
process I have been through many times over in the last year. And what I can see now is
that my inability to be vulnerable and real with my own issues only distanced me from my child's issues.
This little girl who will soon be legally mine, she has a
lot of lies that she has to fight. It’s going to require a lot of love,
stability, therapy and truth-telling over her life for her to understand that
her past does not define her and any words that were spoken over her don’t have
weight. She is treasured and valued because
of who she is, and she doesn’t have to do anything to add to that.
And I’m just like her. For a year I’ve been trying to lead
her down this path of healing while simultaneously ignoring all of the lies
that I’ve pushed deep down along the way. And it hasn’t worked.
I have never been one to feel like I needed to earn God’s
favor. My struggle is to let His favor be enough. I am grateful that He sees
and knows and loves me.
But.
But I also want to be seen, known, and loved by
other people. I want to feel like somebody.
So I assign a higher value to certain people’s opinions, and I work a
little harder to earn their favor.
Over time what happened is that I filled my plate with a lot
of stuff that would make me feel
significant, and instead, it left me tired, burned out, weak, sick, and sometimes feeling used. And then what was leftover was not enough to meet the emotional needs of my family which has been through a lot of change in the last year. All of the extra stuff kept me from effectively doing the only thing I really needed to be doing
during this season.
L and I, we are on the same path. A path towards healing,
where we learn to let go of things that defined us previously, where we learn
that what God says about who we are is enough and that nothing in the past,
present, or future can add or take away from the value of that. I haven’t been
able to help her see that until the blinders fell off of my own eyes and I was
able to recognize how much we have in common.
She and I, we will fulfill every purpose and design that God
has for us. So I can rest and know that, whatever her healing looks like, it’s
not up to me to write her story. Likewise, I can let go of the lie in my heart
that says I need to do something “more significant than…” if I am going to make
an impact in any way.
My heart is being transformed as I learn to look at life through
a new lens, one that is aware of and comfortable with the limits I have. One
that is grateful for, and not frustrated by, the cards that I’ve been dealt. I’m
not there yet. She’s not there yet. But I am thankful for new mercies, which
are available to us every single morning.
I’m glad to hold her hand down this path.
Her big day, it’s coming soon. And we can’t wait to share it
with you. Until then, here’s a little sneak peek of what’s to come…
