Living in a theme park world

I recently wrote a letter to a friend in which I continued a conversation we had been having about raising children. This friend has children very close in age to my own children and so we often find ourselves comparing notes and discussing things that pertain to child raising. There were so many different aspects to that conversation but what stood out to me as I was writing it was the explanation I gave my friend for the difference in how I raised my oldest based on all the things I do now.

You see when my oldest was little, starting at age two, we had passes to a large theme park every year. Not only that but we took her to very large theme parks that we had to travel for days to get to. When we weren’t going to theme parks we were taking her to carnivals and fairs. We took her to restaurants with large play areas for the simple purpose of letting her have fun. We took her to kid’s festivities. Basically…if it looked fun for a child, we did it.

Oh, how things have changed. I no longer see those amusement parks as the best way to have fun. They’re still fun, and I’m not opposed to them in general, but now I see them differently. I find more fun in a day spent doing something simple, enjoying the Lord’s creation, spending time with my family.

The trouble is…my daughter was very much a product of the theme park lifestyle she was given as a young child. She loved our trips to the theme parks, looked forward to the next one, asked to go again…and again…and again. It was much like a merry go round where the ride never stopped.

And the child that so loved the theme parks…had a hard time enjoying a day at home. When doing something of a simpler nature if asked if she was having fun the answer was always no. She had been conditioned nearly from birth to love the fast paced, exciting fun of the theme park and it showed.

It still shows.

That child, who isn’t a child anymore, loves big cities. She can’t find enjoyment in the woods, in the country. She finds no enjoyment in animals. Watching the stars just to see them in the night sky holds no fascination for her.

She is the product of having lived in a theme park world.

The trouble is…so is everyone else. There is a television show I enjoy watching occasionally. It was made in the 1970’s and is set in the 1800’s. As life unfolds for the people in that show you see them doing the mundane, the everyday…at least it was the everyday things for them…they worked hard and found pleasure in simple entertainment. In the episodes where a carnival, circus or other big entertainment happened you can see their excitement and amazement in what was before them. But for them those times were few and far between. Of course that is television, not real life, but the comparisons can still be made. In the show you can see how the children would try and do the things they had seen and done at those exciting times long after the entertainment had left town.

I see those same behaviors in my own children after they’ve seen or done something exciting. I hear it in their voices as they remember. I see it in the light in their eyes as they talk about it. I see it in their play as they act it out.

The trouble is too many of the people today have grown up in a theme park world.

Too many people today can’t take joy in the simple pleasures because they’ve been programmed by a theme park world from birth. Walk through any toy store and see how many toys you find that require batteries. Too many to count.

Narrow your search a little and stay in the infant toys. You should be safe there…right? I mean what kind of battery operated gadget could a baby possibly need? One trip through the baby section paints what should be a horror story. Not only are there battery operated toys for babies but the list of ‘must have’ items, most of which take batteries or electricity, for babies is enough to boggle the mind.

And it gets worse. Some of those toys and must have items are actually designed to put a tablet in so that the baby is entertained by what is basically a computer.

These aren’t the types of things I’ve ever wanted for my children so I’m not sure exactly what’s out there but I’m going to assume that somewhere out there is a gadget to put a tablet into the baby’s crib. If not then there’s a baby toy that’s made to appear to be a tablet for a baby that goes in the crib. At least I assume there is.

I recently saw something that said today’s children are being shortchanged the child given right to play outside by the electronic world they live in. Simply put today’s children don’t find the pleasures in the natural world that children of times past did because there’s too much ready-made enjoyment to be found in the latest electronic gadget.

And parents are instilling that in their children from birth.

When a baby is raised in an electronic world they learn to enjoy that life and find little or no enjoyment in things that don’t offer instant entertainment.

When I was a girl I remember hearing people talk about how letting kids watch TV was a bad thing because it was unrealistic. They talked of how thirty minute TV shows taught children to expect quick fixes to even the biggest problems.

I saw something not all that long ago that said depression is now an epidemic. I find myself asking why that is. When, exactly, did depression become a problem? Has it always been there, with or without the name of depression to label it, or is it a modern day problem? Is it something that the human heart, the human mind, has always been prone to? Or is it the result of raising children in a world that teaches instant gratification and quick fixes to big problems?

My husband and I recently visited a cemetery with graves that dated as far back as the early 1800’s, possibly the 1700’s…some were too old to make out all the writing on them. I have this strange enjoyment of visiting old cemeteries. It’s an enjoyment my husband shares. It isn’t the kind of entertainment, instant gratification, fun of today. For me it’s being able to look at those headstones, to imagine the people buried there, to think of what their lives were like.

And to hurt for them.

In that cemetery we saw numerous graves for young children and babies. In some places there were many children from the same family buried side by side. To walk through that cemetery, or any old cemetery, it appears that children in times past were very fragile. Their lives were ended while they were still young. Even the adults…so many of them died in their twenties, thirties, and forties. In fact forty-something seemed to just about be old age for the people in the 1800’s based on the graves in that cemetery.

Age, it seemed, was a detriment to the people of times past and it wasn’t because they had grown old enough to enter into what we now see as fragile years. It was simply that being young made them fragile. What caused the deaths of all those young people…who knows? But their lives were ended during a time when our society today would say they were too young.

Today our young people are just as fragile only now it’s in a different way. We no longer fear plagues and outbreaks of illnesses that can and did kill hundreds of people. It isn’t that we aren’t suseptable to those things today…the outbreak of Ebola last year confirmed that…but that today we have what we consider to be modern medicine.

The thing is we still have outbreaks of things, epidemics that take our young people as sure as cholera and other dreaded diseases took them in past eras. According to what I read on depression…our young people are being lost to the dark void of depression in record numbers. So much so that it’s now an epidemic and they don’t expect it to get better.

Once again I must ask…Why? When did this ‘epidemic’ start? Has it always been there or is it a product of our modern times? Did children that were raised seeing true pain and depravation fall prey to the darkness of their own emotions in times when a family might lose every child they had to influenza? Did children that grew up moving from state to state, fearing Indian attacks and outlaws, walking for hundreds of miles…did they suffer from depression when something went bad in their young adult years? Did children that went hungry because their family had little food and less money grow up to feel depressed?

Or is depression and ‘epidemic’ of our own making? Did we set the stage to create depression in our children by giving them everything they wanted? Did we set the stage for depression by raising them in the nicest house we could afford? Did we set the stage by putting them in every kind of class or lesson their heart desired? Did we set it by giving them big excitement? By providing them with the instant entertainment of television, movies, and computers?

I often think of the times my friend has told me she would have liked to live when people had the Lord and not much else. I think, too, of the times most people cry out to God. By their own admissions it’s often when things get so bad they can’t face them alone. Then they want the Lord to come make it all better.

And that brings me back to thinking of how our world has turned into what amounts to a theme park. Go into any decent sized town and entertainment abounds…movie theaters, malls, shopping centers, museums, parks with fancy playgrounds, skating rinks…and the list goes on. Without ever stepping foot in a real theme park we can live in one every day. Instant entertainment and instant gratification are the norm. And our lives, including the fragile emotions of our children and young people, show it.

Because we are living in a theme park world.

When I was in my teens and twenties I heard often about men and boys that suffered from what was called ‘Peter Pan syndrom’. Now that wasn’t a true disorder, it wasn’t medically diagnosed, wasn’t seen as some kind of disease. But it was all too real. Girls spoke of it often. Back then it was well understood that girls matured faster than boys. It was a good part of the reason most girls were only interested in older boys and men. Even if those boys and young men were growing up, maturing, they weren’t doing so at the rate the girls were.

Then there were the ones that suffered from ‘Peter Pan syndrom’ they had fallen prey to ‘I don’t want to grow up’. This was seen in boys and men only. I never heard of any female being labeled with that particular syndrome.

Today…a good part of the people in our society have it.

Children suffer from it.

Adults suffer from it.

But the worst…parents suffer from it.

And our world suffers for it. We live in a nation of people that have been raised on having all their problems fixed or wiped away with the ease of loosing themselves in video games, movies, and music. They can live on the edge by riding a roller coaster, jumping off a platform or out of an airplane.

Poof! Their problems are gone.

Until they show up in all their ugly details. And when they do….too many people aren’t equipped to handle them. Because they’ve been insulated from the bad. They’ve had all there problems fixed with little or no effort on their part. Their problems have been erased with the huge magic eraser of entertainment.

Because we live in a theme park world.

It’s expected. It’s understood. It’s unspoken. It simply is the way things are. All our problems can be erased by finding something to consume our thoughts and our time. Whatever your method of entertainment…it can be found. Whatever you need to get your thoughts off real life…it can be delivered to your door.

Because we live in a theme park world.

On the journey together

The path stretches ahead, long and winding. Slow and gently rolling at times. At other times it twists and turns, climbs and drops, doubles back on itself and even has knots tied in the path that I must traverse to reach my Savior.

I once thought it was an easy path. One that all I had to do was take a long road through a meandering countryside where the weather was perfect, the sun was shining, there were big white fluffy clouds in the sky, and there were plenty of other travelers along the way.

I was wrong.

Trials and tribulations. That’s what we’re promised. Nothings fair, the road’s not wide and smooth, the path isn’t free of rocks and kinks, the weather isn’t all sunshine and pretty clouds at the perfect temperature. The weather comes in spurts of blizzards and hurricanes interspersed with sunshine. The path is narrow and hard to see at times. Sometimes I can stand up and walk, sometimes I crawl. I have to dodge branches and brambles. Sometimes I must wiggle through knots in the path that are pulled so tight I don’t think I’ll be able to get through them. And the few other travelers along the way are hard to find among the shadowy figures that line the sides of the path, telling me they’re going to the same destination I am but I know from the direction they’re walking that they’re on a different path even though they can’t tell it.

Alone, I continue my journey. In one hand I cling to the map that is the Word of God, with the other I reach toward Heaven begging my savior to take me by the hand and lead me where He wants me to go. The path is difficult at times but it’s manageable. But oh how I wish I had someone to share the journey with, someone to help me study the Map, to figure out the harder areas of the path.

Then I round a bend in the trail… And there standing on the path is another traveler. One that isn’t just off the trail but right in the middle of it. I can clearly see this traveler. There are no shadows to obscure my view. And what I see gives me joy, gives me hope. This traveler has the same Map of life that I do. This traveler is standing with one had stretched toward the Lord as I have. And I know.

Here is a fellow traveler.

We’re headed to the same destination.

I didn’t expect to see anyone else on my path. I’d long since given up hope of finding another. But here was an unexpected gift in this rocky path I’m traveling.

The other traveler holds a hand out to me. For the moment I forget the mountain, forget the twists and turns in the path. I reach out and link hands with this traveler. I didn’t foresee this other traveler joining me on my journey but I’m glad they did. I expected to continue my journey alone but now I’m not.

And right there on the path the Lord created a miracle for me. He gave me a gift I never thought to be given. Without warning, without much time passing He forever linked my heart and my fellow travelers together. He joined us as man and wife.

This isn’t just a fellow traveler. This is now my husband. The surprise of the gift I’ve been given, the magnitude of it takes some adjusting. I thought I would be forever alone on this path and the Lord provided not only a fellow traveler but someone that is now a part of who I am.

Together, hand in hand we continue our journey. The twists and turns are made easier, the road a little less bumpy simply because I no longer travel alone. I know the way hasn’t gotten any easier but it feels as if it has simply because I no longer have to face it alone.

Onward we go, traveling down the path, making our way through the brambles and the storms. As we walk we talk of life and Christ, of our journey, of where we’ve been and where we’re going.

Steadily we keep going. Encouraging each other.

I’m going along just fine, stumbling here and there, taking the weather and the twists as they come. The aloneness that once bothered me is now a distant memory. My husband, my companion, the other half of me is here to share in all the ups and downs of the paths. He shares my joy in the sunshine and the easy stretches in the journey, he helps me over the rocks, he leads me when I can’t see the path for the fog.

I send up prayers of thanks with every step. The Lord has blessed me on my journey. And I wonder how I ever made it on this path alone. Where I once longed for others that were taking the same trip I am, heading to the same destination, now I look at my husband, grasp his hand a little tighter and am grateful I’m no longer alone.

Sometimes we stop to visit with the figures along the side of the path hoping that ‘this one’ might be join us on our path…only to be disappointed time and again. So we go back to stumbling down the path again. Then we round a bend in the path and there before us our rocky road is headed straight up a mountain bigger than Mt. Everest, covered in thick layers of ice, in the midst of a blizzard that obscures everything. I can faintly see what looks like a series of knots in the path, pulled so tight I can’t see a spot to wiggle through.

Maybe it’s the blizzard obscuring the openings, maybe it’s the mountain but something brings me to a halt. I stand on this path that I didn’t choose, seeking my Savior that I want more than anything and I know I’m about to fail. The temptation to look back and see if I can see the stretch of path that was all sunshine and easy going just a few steps back beckons. I don’t want to look back. I don’t want to go back. I like the path I’m on.

Something inside warns me that this is about to get very, very difficult. My heart cries out to my Lord. Silently. Begging Him to clear the path. If only the path would stop here, if only I could stay in this place forever. But I can’t. I want to keep forging ahead, growing closer to my Lord. But the temptation is there none the less.

I take a few steps forward my hand stretched toward Heaven. And I see that my hand is still entwined with my husbands. And I’m reminded. I’m no longer on this journey alone. My husband lightly squeezes my fingers, our hands stretched toward Christ together. It’s a reminder I badly need as I clutch my map tightly to my chest. I’m not alone on my journey. We’re in this together now.

 I put one foot in front of the other, my steps matching my husbands as we continuing down the path. It’s hard but somehow it’s not as hard because I have we’re together. I clutch my map tightly to my chest and share the struggle of making our way over the difficult stretch of path with my husband.

A rock I didn’t see trips me and I stumble. Those aren’t small rocks on the path. They’re large and round, mixed with slick mud that tries to pull me in and hold me in place. I struggle to gain my footing and feel my husband lift me back to my feet and help me through the difficult stretch. On down the path we go. Mud latches onto our feet weighing us down, slowing our steps.

Icy wind blows up out of nowhere and slams against me with every step. It blows through my clothes and bombards me until my fingers are frozen and I can no longer feel my feet.  I look at my husband and see he too is struggling against the wind. He squeezes my hand, then wraps his arm around my shoulders. We huddle together and keep going. Now we must yell to hear each other and our teeth chatter with every word but we speak of Christ and encourage each other. We know our destination will be worth the struggles we must go through to reach it.

I lean into my husband and keep stumbling forward.

But as that mountain looms before us, as those knots in the path grow ever closer my steps grow slower, my feet hit a patch of ice and as I slide back down the path my emotions take over. And my flesh begs to demand of my Creator what He was thinking. The questions flit through my mind to wonder why He gave me this path.

My husbands arm tightens around me, stopping my backward slide. He pulls me back into place beside him. I wipe snow off his face and thank him. We stand there…looking at each other, as the storm rages around us, and remind each other that this too shall pass. It’s just a difficult section we must get through. We open our map, somewhere along the way we have lost one but we know its okay because we are no longer two travelers but one, joined through Christ, and that we no longer need two separate maps. We study our map together and are encouraged. We know that the Lord has us and this difficult stretch of the journey in His hands, that He’s in control of us and the storm around us.

Encouraged, we close our map and continue our journey. The rocks and mud are still there, the icy wind still blows but we have each other and we have Christ. So onward we go. Thorns grow up in front of us, slowing us even more. They tear at our clothes and  I once again want to question Christ but I’m encouraged by the feel of my husbands hand around mine and  as  I push the thorns aside I push the questions away with them.

It’s not my place to question my Lord. And I keep going.

Slower now. My teeth are chattering from the cold, snow is sliding down my neck, mud has coated my feet. But the path keeps going. It’s like an escalator. I can’t stop it, can’t stop my forward momentum I can only go forward. Placing one foot in front of the other, struggling up the slick and icy path. Through the swirling white I can just make out enough of the path to see that before I reach the knot I must climb straight up the mountain. Just to the left of the path there’s an easier way, it gently moves over hills that slowly go over the mountain, but here in front of me is a sheer cliff that I must scale.

But  I don’t have to scale it alone. I look over at my husband and see that his struggles are as rough as mine but we’re here together and somehow that makes the cliff a little less sheer. But still it’s there and we must scale it.

So scale it we do. I cling to it with bare hands and feet that are weighed down with enough mud to make me wonder if someone isn’t holding onto me, pulling me back. But I keep climbing.

I can hear my husband climbing beside me, feel his hand on me helping me climb. I reach over and take his hand, pulling on him because I know the mud is clinging to him just as it is to me. And we continue up the mountain.

This isn’t a mountain I wanted to scale. These aren’t the trials I wanted to face. Anger starts to take hold as I try and shake some of the mud off my feet. I lose a shoe but the mud hangs on. I claw at the rocky surface of the sheer cliff, trying to gain a hold that will keep me from sliding on the icy path. I tell myself I can’t get angry. It isn’t allowed.

I’m supposed to be thankful for everything that comes my way. But…the flesh battles the spirit. The anger wants to win. Hand over hand, one footstep at a time, I climb the cliff. I stay on the path. It’s so narrow now that I can feel open air on either side of us. I can sense the deep void of nothingness which I know isn’t really nothingness because lining my path is a broader path. The easy way. The way that runs right alongside where I’m at.

But I’m not on that path. I’m on this one. And I want to be on the one I’ve been placed on. Only today, in this moment, as I lose three fingernails to the sharp rocks cutting into my hands, as my feet slip and slide and are long past feeling numb from the cold and the ice, as my flesh and my spirit do battle against themselves. Today…I fight anger at the One that placed me here.

I shouldn’t feel it. I can’t allow myself to feel it. It isn’t my place to ask questions or to demand answers. I’m not allowed to blame my Maker for the path He placed me on. And the guilt sets in. Because I don’t want to ever be angry with Him. But the battle keeps raging. The snow turns to sleet. It hits me with the fierceness of knives, it cuts through me and lands blow after blow against my heart.

And I raise my hand.

I beg for forgiveness.

Beg for help.

And once again I see…

My husbands hand wrapped around mine. He squeezes my hand, somehow sensing the turmoil inside me, sensing the storm that rages in me with the fierceness of the storm that batters us. And I’m reminded again that through the difficult stretches I’m no longer alone. I apologize again to my Lord and thank Him for the blessing He gave me when he gave me my husband. Difficult as the path may be I remember that it’s so much easier now that I’m no longer alone.

My husband tells me I would be okay if I had to travel the path alone and I doubt that I would be. He reminds me that I have Christ and that’s all I need but he doesn’t know how much I need him. How much I have come to depend on him as we’ve struggled over the difficult stretches of the path. I tell him I would be okay because I know deep down that if I didn’t have him I would continue the journey alone but I still doubt that I would be okay without him. I need him here, on this path with me. I need him to see me through the rough patches. Because without me quite knowing how it happened I now depend on him with every step.

We stand in the storm and talk about how much easier the path is now that we have each other and then we face the mountain again. It’s still there, still looming around us. We look at our feet and see that we are balanced on a small ledge just big enough for the two of us. We laugh because it’s either that or cry. Here is a brief reprieve from the sheer cliff we’re scaling and we didn’t even see it until it was time to climb again.

And so we start our ascent.

Because we’re on this path. And there is no alternative. We must keep going. Christ is with us and we know that. He’s there…we can feel him. And we know that He has a plan for this storm being in our path. That there’s a reason He has placed us on this cliff.

It’s a cliff I’d rather not be on because at the top of this cliff I can see the knots I know we must try and find a way to wiggle through. And worse…I can know see something huge and dark and threatening looming there. It waits for us as we keep climbing. I want to stop. I want to stay hanging on this cliff forever. Going backward isn’t an option; hanging on the cliff with the threat looming over us isn’t an option, even though I’d gladly stay here forever if only I didn’t have to face that threat.

But as I look into the threat that’s waiting just ahead…I’m afraid. I don’t want to go any further.

But we keep going. As I climb I raise my hand toward Heaven knowing my Lord is reaching for me even though I can’t see Him. And I see my hand still held snuggly in my husbands. Together we reach for Christ. Peace is there but so is pain. The pain of the icy knives slicing into my heart, cutting chunk after chunk out of me. It’s shredding me and still I climb because I’ve been given no other option. I was placed on this path and I cannot get off. I don’t want to get off. But I don’t want to face the fog or the threat either.

And so the flesh and the spirit battle.

But I’ve found my Savior again. I can feel His hand on mine even while it rests inside my husbands hand. I can feel my Lord lifting me up, holding me because I know I’m rapidly approaching that place when I can’t hold myself up anymore. And I know that it’s not just me He’s holding up. I know that He’s holding my husband up right along with me. Because my husband and I are one, because we are on this path toghether. Even still the path has become too hard. It’s more than I can bear. And it keeps hurtling me closer and closer to the threat I can see looming, growing bigger and darker, at the top of the cliff. There’s no escaping the threat, no turning around, no avoiding it. I must keep climbing. I must struggle through the knots to reach the top.

And I must face the threat.

I know I won’t do it alone. I can’t do it alone. Already my legs are weak, my knees are buckling and my strength is about gone. Beside me my husband slows too, I know without looking that he is depending more on our Lord. That gives me courage to face what’s coming even though I know my courage is gone. Somehow even as I grow weaker in body I gain strength from knowing my husband too is relying on our Lord to see us through.

It won’t be long now before I have nothing left to climb with and my Lord will have to carry me. I have no strength to get through the knots, no ability to scale the last of the cliff, and I know that I have nothing to fight the threat with.

I lean against my husband and cling tighter to my Lord. Somehow, somewhere, on this path that has thrown difficulties at me and now looms above me threatening me…somehow this man that was once a stranger has no become not only a part of me but he has become a part of my relationship with Christ. And as I lean into my husband and let my Lord take my weight I know that they will see me through. That Christ will see us both through. Because I can feel my husband leaning on Him just as much as I am.

And I know…

The Lord is the only thing keeping us on the mountain now. He’s there and He’s holding us as we hold each other. He will carry us to the top, battle the threat for us, and see us safely over the mountain.

 

I had a plan

I took a trip with my sister a few years ago. When we left the house we had a plan for how that trip would go. We knew where we wanted to be when, how many miles we had to drive each day, and what we wanted to do. We had a plan. My sister had even gone online and mapped it all out down to the best routes to take and what the weather was going to be where.

We had a plan but almost from the minute we pulled out of the driveway that plan was changed through very little fault of our own.

The first change in plans was the need to buy tires. That was an unexpected expense when we had no extra money for the trip. From there things just kept changing on us. The weather that was supposed to be mild and warm turned very cold. The plan to spend every night camping turned into night after night in expensive hotels. And so the trip went.

It turned out to look very little like the trip we had planned. We managed to keep our main plans but everything else was changed. Those changes came at us hard and fast and forced us to just go with what was happening in the moment.

And do you know what?

To this day that trip is one of my most favored memories of any trip I’ve ever taken.

The journey that I’m on now…the one drawing me ever closer to Christ is much like that trip I took with my sister. I’m learning not to make plans, not to look to the future but I’m learning that through changes that keep coming at me out of the blue. Changes that force me to stop planning ahead and live in the moment. Changes that shake my world and make me see that I have no control over anything.

But…

I had a plan.

Once upon a time.

I well remember the day that I told the Lord I was tired of trying to control things. I was tired of holding tight to everything, controlling-or so I thought-everything, right down to the little details. I handed my life fully over to Him that day. What I didn’t realize when I did that was that He already had full control of my life.

I remember, too, the day I learned to be grateful for everything. Even the bad stuff. I stood in my kitchen and thanked the Lord for something I wasn’t at all grateful for. I told Him I had no idea why I was supposed to be thankful for the bad things but that I knew He would use it for my good and so…thank you. Not the most grateful prayer, I know, but that day it was the best I could do.

I still haven’t found it in myself to be grateful for losing my baby. I just can’t. I know it was the Lord’s will. I know He has a plan that is so much greater than anything I could ever imagine. I know He will use even this for His purpose. But I can’t be grateful.

I’ve tried telling myself that the Lord may have saved my baby from a lifetime of pain. Or a slow agonizing death. Or… But nothing I tell myself has yet to make me grateful for the loss of my child.

There have been many things in my life that I didn’t thank the Lord for. Times when I struggled or hurt and it wasn’t until years later that I was grateful for what I went through. This may wind up being one of those things or I may never be grateful. Not for the loss.

I am grateful for the time I had with my baby, however brief it was. And I can see now, daily, how the life and loss of that baby is changing me. Molding me into something I wasn’t before.

Sometimes I wonder if the changes will stay. Sometimes I wonder if it will be good if they do. I can see how the experience has drawn me closer to Christ. But I can also see that it has caused other changes in me…changes that I don’t yet know if they’re good or bad.

I wonder, as I write this, if that is the kind of thing I should be writing and posting online. Should my blog be kept strictly uplifting? Edifying? And yet…we all struggle. Our faith doesn’t stop the struggles. It doesn’t stop the pain. It gives us a hope that the unregenerate don’t have but the trials and the struggles persist. We must face them, get through them.

And so…I will post of my struggles. Of my own thoughts, doubts, and wonders. So that you, my reader, can experience them with me.

I always thought....

“I always thought I wouldn’t have to do this if I was married.”

I say that to my husband from time to time. I said it when I checked our son’s bike, I said it when I fixed the bedroom door. There are just some things that I assumed I’d never have to do if I was married. I told my sister the same thing when she and I were in one state, my husband in another and we were changing the tire on her car.

I had in my head that there were things a husband would take care of and I’d never have need to do those things again.

Today, as I lay in bed, attempting to hang on to my unborn child, three hundred miles away from home and my husband, I want to say those words. Only…it’s not that I never thought I’d have to go through something like this if I was married, I just never thought I’d have to go through it alone. Not that I’m alone. I have my children, my sister, and most importantly my Lord.

But I want to curl up in my husband’s arms. To talk to him, with him. To hear his voice, to let him soothe some of my fears. Instead…I’m here and…

I never thought I’d have to do this alone if I was married.

The Lord and His timing aren’t the same as what I’d choose. I would never have chosen this particular trial, would have done anything I could to prevent it but I got it anyway. And as this trial swirls not around me but inside me I’m left wishing it had never happened and longing for a slightly different scenario if it had to happen. If the Lord would have just timed it a little better… three days sooner and I’d have been with my husband, four days later and I’d have been with him. Instead He placed it right in the middle of the time when I’m not home. He placed it at a time when I’m away from the person that is my safe place, the person that makes the trials easier to bear, the person that I want with me…always…but never more than now.

And by placing me in this time the Lord has once again placed my dependence firmly on Him. I always depend on Him but I also depend on my husband. Today, as I keep in close contact with my husband…I keep in close contact with my Lord too.