Survival Float

I sit here this early afternoon under a warm electric blanket in silence with the exception of the radio playing softly beside me. In bed still. I ask myself. Why am I still here. It is 11 oclock. I should be up. The problem is i've been sick the last couple weeks. Not sick like give me some cough syrup and an antibiotic (oh how I wish it was that easy)... but sick as in being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. When I got this news I was relieved because I had answers but it didn't take long for the resentment, anger, confusion and jealously to set in. Not understanding why me? I have asked this question alot in my life it feels like. 

I have sat in the last week in a fog awaiting the doctor appointment to begin what I can only describe as a lifelong sentence to medication. Whether it be supplementation or prescribed. I will never get away from this. I cant run away. I cant will myself better. There is no magic pill. There is no magic surgery. This was a life sentence. It came on suddenly and scary as a matter of fact. Weakness follwed by forgetting who I was momentarily, realizing I couldnt remmeber what day it was, Waiting for the doctor has been a huge struggle. If you've ever lived in this state you would understand just how hard it makes it to just daily function and do regular things like grocery shop, clean house, remember to get your kids from school or that they are properly dressed or homework is done. Its terrible to feel as if your mind is leaving you. I type this in a fog as I want so badly to explain how living this way feels but I struggle as my fingers move to keep my brain moving at the same pace. You begin to ask yourself questions. Uncertain if you will ever be the same. You begin to fear the future, be jealous of the past and grieve the present. 

Today I woke up in the same fog I have been the last couple weeks. Today feels better than yesterday but not quite as good as the day before. I havent made it passed my bed yet. Remnants of breakfast, clumps of hair that have began falling out, strewed about the pile of colored pencils, in my jacket in bed under my blanket and still freezing cold.  All I can hold onto the fact that this morning, despite my pain, my memory, my confusion that God hasn't left me. This morning I was grasping at straws and reached for my bible and grabbed an old devotional on the bedside table from 2013 I opened it to a devotional called "The Survival Float" It brought me straight to Psalms 55. I read this and tried all I could do to not soak the pages of my bible in my tears. I am broken and confused. I'm a little angry to be honest.. not at God. Just at the kinda luck I always seem to have. Then God brought me this verse. "Cast your care on the Lord and he will sustain you"... not heal you, not rescue you, not make it all better. He will sustain you... that doesn't mean God wont heal  me. He might choose to. He might choose to make me better but right now I know He is telling me to hold onto Him tight. He is my survival float. And He is telling me. No matter what he will sustain me. And as the very last sentence of psalms closes I realized this was my answer. "But as for me, I trust in You."

Refusing to lose myself in pursuit of my children.

What a ridiculous title I bet was the first thing that ran across your mind. Strangely enough it has been weighing on my mind heavily the last few months. Now let me get one thing straight. I love my children fiercely with a love that knows no limits but I also love them so much I've decided that because I love them that much I refuse for my life to revolve around them. Yes really. We spend our days and nights once we become parents focusing on our children's successes. Their achievements. From the time they begin to walk until they walk across that graduation stage and then more.

I've spent the last few years of my life letting my 8 year old daughter pour herself into organized sports. From tumbling to tball, softball to basketball and then all over again. Now don't get me wrong I believe these outlets are unbelievable teachers of life for children so I'm strictly using this as an example but what happens when I as a parent began to eat, drink, live and breathe these sports becoming so consumed in her love of an activity that I forget my first true love. God. It's a hard pill to swallow when I woke up and realized one day this has become me. My busyness and life had become so lost in one thing I wasn't sure quite when it happened that I began to lose little pieces of myself. I rarely took time to experience life anymore. I forgot what It felt like to feel accomplished  working under the buzz of a sewing machine or what it smelled like spending an entire day baking interesting new creations, or what it sounded like to hear my children's laughter during a popcorn and sugar filled family movie night. I had been living life but not truly experiencing it. I realized this had created the so called domino effect. I had become not such a great friend wife or mother for that fact.

How so? I bet your asking. You are giving your child everything she wants and pushing her towards greatness right? Well maybe....but maybe not. I read something today that said recognize the difference in happiness and joy. I don't think joy is something we can chase, no matter how much we strive to get more of this world joy doesn't come then. I think joy comes when we stop chasing the fulfillment of this world. We can enjoy this world but we can't find our joy there. No matter how hard we search we will always come up empty and unfulfilled. I want to teach my children more than chasing happiness of this life. I want them to learn that you can not chase joy down. Whether we think we will find that in a new career, home, money or our children. Instead we must first seek his kingdom and let everything else just take its course. That we don't become consumed In our own lives we forget the whole purpose of our life.

You see many people would tell me that I'm doing it right. That my heart is right by wanting to give my children things maybe I believed I never had and I'm okay with doing that to a point. But when I look at the adults my kids will become in just a few short years away I hope I can say I directed their paths toward Jesus first always because I don't want to be sitting in a pew years down the road wondering what in the world I did so wrong. That I didn't lose myself in them so much during the years of their youth that I missed the whole point in directing them to Him.