here come the words!!!

"The Lord has promised good to me
His word my hope secures
He will my shield and portion be
As long as life (sickness, sleepless nights, stress - enter your choice of word here) endures"

part of Amazing Grace by Chris Tomlin

this blog is my therapy, where i process, and where i journal our life. i realize i've been "silent" the last few days. this is not because i haven't had time. it's not because i haven't had anything to say. it's because i snapped and i couldn't figure out what to say about it. i knew if i was honest, it wasn't going to be pretty and you all might realize how truly ugly my heart is.

i don't want to re-live the whole thing but, on Saturday, when i was so looking forward to some sort of a break and woke up to Pat and Rebekah sick, i snapped. it wasn't visually obvious. i didn't have steam coming out of my head. but all hope disappeared. well, it didn't really, i just CHOSE to turn my back on it. already, for 10 days i'd been walking around praying a 1-word prayer..."Lord..." many times a day. it was all i could do to get through the 10 days we'd already lived through. but i was hopeful it would end. i was clinging to Him and His strength. and my heart was peaceful and hopeful- even though my house and our health wasn't.

but on Saturday, i let go.

let go of that peace and hope and went deep into a very ugly place in my heart. i'm not proud of this. i hate it. i hated it at the time. yet i felt helpless to do anything else.

pat was beside himself. he tried everything to help me. he listened to me, he watched me cry, he talked to me and prayed with me and for me.

i refused encouragement. i refused to pray. i refused to seek Him in His Word. i refused to listen to the music i knew would "bring me back." i was being just plain stubborn and drowning in my self-pity. i cried more tears than i've cried in a REALLY long time. over everything and anything....your sweet comments and emails, my kids arguing, kissing my kids goodnight, pat praying for me.

one night, after listening to me complain about how awful i've been and what an awful mom i was that day, Pat said something along the lines of "ok, devil, you can leave now." he was joking. but there was some definitely truth to that. i was giving into all the lies the devil was feeding me. and ignoring the truth and strength that my Lord was willing to give me.

yesterday afternoon, i sent Pat this email:
"Can you take Thursday off? As a vacation day? This is not a joke, or humor, I’m dead serious. You will be here and I will be far, far away for a few hours. I’m not promising it will totally “fix” me – but it might allow your kids to continue to live."

he wrote back:
"ok"

those 2 letters started to bring me out of that awful place. some hope. some relief. a break. i can't wait. and tomorrow's my birthday. although normally i would say that i would rather be with my family on my birthday...i am so excited to have a few hours alone - to myself.

so, i'm snapping out of it. i still feel exhaused emotionally. i still am exhaused physically. i still have hardly any patience with my kids. but i don't feel like i'm going to completely lose it at any moment. HIS peace is back.

i'm embarassed at how i handled this situation. yes, we've been sick for practically 2 months, but we're strong, healthy people that can recover from it. i have so much to be thankful for.

i'm so thankful that i have a Lord that is so patient with me.
i'm so thankful for His peace.
i'm so thankful that i have a washing machine that's worked through all the middle of the night washings of gross stuff.
i'm so thankful for all your sweet words - they hit places deep in my heart - even though i tried to pretend they didn't.
i'm so thankful for my sweet kids and their never-ending forgiveness. (last night i asked their forgiveness for my ugliness. they all looked at me like i had 3 heads. and rebekah said, "i don't remember you being ugly to us. i just remember you talking to daddy." hmmm....)
i'm so thankful for my husband's patient love and forgiveness.

i can't say i'm so thankful for what we've been through. i'm not sure what i was "supposed" to learn from it yet. maybe i'll never know. maybe i was so stubborn that i didn't learn it at all.

but i am so very thankful for the never-changing Lord that i serve and i pray that somehow He is glorified through all my ugliness. and i pray i do better next time.