What I want to be and what I am are forever at odds. I want to be strong; I am weak. I want to serve; I am selfish. I want to rejoice, instead I grumble. I want to pray, instead I curse. The other day was a painful reminder of the dichotomy.
It started with nothing, really. An impression I got that morphed into a phone call that went south too quickly for me to control. Exhaustion and stress make for hasty expressions and quicker still interpretations of them. Even the possibility of my interpretation being accurate was enough to cause a nuclear explosion to my grace and self control.
Boom.
I detonated, and everything I thought I had learned about my faith, about caring for others, about leaning on the Lord, was exposed for what it is: lacking. I am all together lacking. The explosion left me reeling for the rest of the day. I felt isolated, depleted, ungrateful. Ironically enough, it was one of Alder's best days. I should have been crying tears of gratitude; I cried tears of discontent. I should have been singing praises to the Lord for His goodness; I shed tears of fury and mistrust. They gifted Alder a room with a window that day; upon returning home, I promptly shut myself into the darkest room I could find.
Crying in that gloomy little corner, punching at pillows and sobbing for this all to end, it occurred to me that what I was feeling wasn't the Lord's work or will. The Lord wants to lift me up; it is the enemy who desires my destruction. The Lord wants to unite me to His body; the enemy wants to isolate and divide me from them. The Lord wants to fill me with joy; the enemy wants to rob me of it. The enemy left his dirty little skid marks all over my day, and I let him.
That evening my Darling cooked a Michelin-worthy meal, made more beautiful only by a candle light, garden roses, and a serenading Sam Cooke. It was the first meal the two of us have shared alone in a home for 7 weeks, and it was perfect. Perfect until we started to recap the ups and downs of our day, and I began to unravel all over again, sobbing for all my imperfections and inadequacies: for the precious relationships I'd strained, for the real life Cambridge dreams I once lived in that now seem unattainable, for the simple days I had with my 2 children that I'll never know again, for the 9 month pregnancy I expected that ended with Alder's arrival 4 months too soon, for the burden of knowing that someone else is always having to do my mothering for at least one of them, for the exhaustion of always disappointing someone at every waking moment, for the fear of knowing that my son's life always hangs in the balance...It was (and is) all too much. Sometimes, the only way I can respond to the weight of it all is with tears or too many words. So, (in typical Gina fashion,) I maximized and did both:
"Why is He asking me to do the impossible? I'm not strong enough for this!" I sobbed over my stuffed peppers and crudites.
"Maybe that's your answer. It was never your faith that made you strong. It was the One you had faith in." He answered.
I caught my breath. I thought I had already learned that without Him, I am nothing. How did I forget so soon? How can I walk this road without remembering? I have to remember over and over, a thousand times each day: I cannot dwell with Him without repenting. I cannot fully repent without also forgiving. Every day is repentance and forgiveness, Katie's words echoed through my mind. Every day I must open my clenched fists, repent of my shortcomings, accept his forgiveness, and extend it in kind. The reality of my humanity is that I will never, ever master this cycle. But I will practice, standing secure in the knowledge of the Lord's sufficiency, of the never ending well of His mercy, the blood bought grace that is sufficient for me. Tomorrow is a new day, and I will begin it with repentance, receiving in return the joy of His abundant forgiveness and forever love.
“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. ”