Six months
Yesterday marked six
months without my baby, and two weeks until his first birthday. Yes, that means he’s been in Heaven now
longer than he was in my arms. It’s
been one week without my grandpa.
Needless to say, it’s been a heart-wrenching year.
I realize it’s been over
two months now since I’ve written anything, so I figured I’d give an update,
hard as it may be right now. I now
see that the first three months after Luke left us, the Lord spent showing me the
heights of my strength, and my heart responded. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, as this is something
God had prepared me for, but the last three months this world and the devil
have shown me the depths of my weaknesses. When I wrote the first couple of posts, I was overwhelmed
with fear. I feared being at the
center of the hate this world has for Christians – the same hate it had for
Christ himself. I feared becoming
the target of anyone’s wrath for something that I wrote or believe. But, I knew that meant I was right
where God wanted me to be. The
last few months, though, He has challenged me to dig deeper, to not be
complacent with where I believed I was.
That’s the thing about falling in and being in love – you never have
enough. You never would say to
your kids, “I’ve loved you enough today, I’ll check on you later.” So why do we
expect God to do that with us?
And, it’s not a test; it’s a lesson. I’ve been struggling through some difficult things, anxiety
and extreme sadness. Some days it
feels like it, but I know it’s not an impossible thing to overcome. I’m not sure I’m there yet. But the sum of this lesson could be
described with one word: humility.
When I am sad, I am learning to be humble. Humble of everything.
It’s important to ask, “Why am I sad?” And, if I’m being honest, generally, it’s because I am
mourning something that wasn’t mine or that I didn’t deserve to begin
with. It’s because I’m not
bringing myself low enough to see what I have to be happy about. Material blessings, yes, but this
applies to everything and anything I let fight for space in my time and
life. If God is really number one,
and I am His, and He is mine, what else is there? We want so much more for ourselves, and our expectations of
others and ourselves always fall short.
I want to change the things I cannot change, instead of waiting for God
to take control. Or I let people
hurt me who shouldn’t be in a position to hurt me to begin with and stir
turmoil in my life and in my heart.
But what wounds can they create that God cannot heal? I’m letting myself become a victim of
the evil of this world instead of rejoicing in Christ and handing it over. It hasn’t been and isn’t going to be
easy, because I naturally want so much more for myself or even the things I had
before including my life with Luke, but God wants me to be able to accept that
I’m not living for my own will – and that’s a good thing.
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these
surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a
messenger from Satan, to torment me.
Three times, I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is
sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more
gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I
delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in
difficulties. For when I am weak,
then I am strong. 2 Corinthians
12:7-10
So for the last week, I’ve
heard the question, “How are you doing?” over and over again. I’m not sure the answer to that. At first, I was in shock, but then I
was surprised. I was so sad and
discontent before my grandpa passed and had emotionally been skimming the
proverbial bottom that I thought I just couldn’t get any sadder. I thought we’d just been through so
much, I couldn’t even begin to process this new loss. But what I’ve realized over the last week is that I do have
a heightened sense of acceptance but not over what I thought it was. I thought I had just learned to accept
death and tragedy, and I have. But
what I’ve really accepted is that death on earth isn’t something to mourn. We mourn for the people left here still
but envy those who get to go before us.
Our loss is Heaven’s gain.
I couldn’t help but be jealous of my grandfather for getting to go up
and be with Luke, and his daughter, and most of all Jesus, because that is
where we all aspire to be.
So it begs the question of
what purpose am I supposed to fulfill today during my time here. I know God’s answer, but that’s a
difficult calling to answer everyday, but why? Mostly because I am not Christ and am incapable of living a
perfect life, and it’s hard to accept being a disappointment to God and to
others and myself every single day.
So the answer brings me back to humility – to take away that prideful
disappointment and replace it with Christ’s forgiveness and love. That means evaluating our own
relationship with Jesus instead of thinking we’re allowed to judge
others’. That means acknowledging
no matter how great or not so great that relationship is that God wants more
and His work in us will never be complete.
I stumbled upon this. It is no coincidence that God wrote it
better than I ever could:
If you have any encouragement from being united
with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit,
if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being
like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain
conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to
your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ
Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God
something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a
servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became
obedient to death – even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him
the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:1-11
So how am I doing? I still miss Luke and my grandpa, but I
don’t want to get to Heaven and have to tell them I spent my life being bitter,
scorned and sad. How selfish would
that sound? I want to tell them I
lived a life that brought me closer to them everyday. The road is narrow, but the path is clear.
