grace

I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in three months. I know that it is going to be any night now, yet every early morning I am awakened by her sweet snuffles and cries for milk. I feel like I am on the brink of total exhaustion and my brain is mush. I haven’t written much lately because I am not sure whether I can put coherent thoughts together.

I have done this before, eight times! You would think that I would have it down. Yet somehow it is all new, with this new little, bitty, pretty one.

I don’t know much for sure, except that there is nothing like motherhood to reveal your weaknesses. Motherhood is able to bring even the most confident woman to the realization that she knows almost nothing at all. But what a gift that revelation is!

To meet this new person that I have felt wiggling inside of me is pure magic!

Her skin is soft as silk.

Her eyes are big blueberries.

Her lashes are so long and curly, just like a little girl’s lashes should be.

She sleeps a bit more than the boys did, and her cry is softer. She begins to smile and I see that she has dimples around her mouth like I do, and a big dimple in her cheek like Daddy does.

She seems very peaceful, thank you Jesus! But the next week she is awake for hours at a time and doesn’t seem to want to sleep, oh no! By the next week she has settled into a predictable three hour feeding pattern. But the next week after that is totally different! Finally I think I have her figured out; she will sleep until 5am and pretty soon be sleeping the entire night! Yes!! I can get my life back! I can regain my energy, plan my day, exercise, and fit back into my normal clothes again.

But then I find myself sitting in the chair again at 3am, nursing the little bundle in the dark. I am so tired. My eyelids are heavy. So…hard…to…stay…awake. My head sinks to my chest. WAIT! My head snaps back up. My eyes are open. I must…stay…awake! I have fallen asleep in this chair night after night and now my neck has a kink in it and my back is sore. I must feed her quickly and get back into bed! I must be strong!

Little Bitty One is totally unaware of my concern. She nurses lazily and takes almost an hour. I hear the very first bird song at 3:45am. Why are those crazy birds awake so early? The sun won’t be up for hours. How I wish I didn’t know when the first bird starts singing. How I wish I was sound asleep, blissfully unaware of the secret life of birds!

I guess I could be enjoying this quiet time when no one else is awake. I suppose I could spend this time praying. Alright God, here goes. God, please help me to not fall asleep in this chair. Please, please, please let Annalise sleep through the night tomorrow night! I feel like I can’t do this one more night! Please, please, please let her get into a predictable schedule. Then I can start getting up before the rest of the children. I can start to have a quiet time each morning. Then I can start to pursue you more, God.

Suddenly it hits me. God’s grace is for me RIGHT NOW! Not at some point in the future, but right now. It is always RIGHT NOW.

Joseph Garlington shared this definition of grace – “God’s enabling presence that empowers us to accomplish our created purpose.” God’s presence is with me right now, in the middle of the night. His voice is whispering words of love and truth right now to my sleepy brain. He is wooing my worried heart. If I spend every moment thanking Him instead of wishing for something else, I can bring His presence closer. I can cultivate my awareness of Him and accept His power to do what He wants me to do…RIGHT NOW.

And what could possibly be a better time? His power is perfected in weakness, and I am so weak. He says that His grace is sufficient for me in times like these. Not just enough to survive. No, this is an overflowing, abundant grace that is more than enough for me…RIGHT NOW!

Nursing this baby 6 to 8 times a day for an hour each time means I can’t accomplish very much. Trying to figure out how to do my normal grocery shopping and errands and therapy appointments each week in the two hours between each feeding makes my brain hurt. Thinking about having to give up my afternoon nap just to get important things done sends me into a panic! No, I don’t have much time to check off items on my to-do list. But I do have plenty of time to sit and nurse, admire my Pretty One and snuggle.

Time to pray and read and think.

As I think back over my life, I can see some things very clearly. I see that most things I have attempted to accomplish I have done because I felt like I SHOULD. Because I would feel guilty if I didn’t. Because I wouldn’t be as good of a mother as someone else. I did those things out of my own strength, my own ability, my own effort. And I failed at most of them.

I think about Solomon’s words in Ecc 3:14, “Everything God does will endure forever. Nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away from it.”

I think about Jesus’ words in John 15:5, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Nothing of eternal significance that will endure that is. I have done a lot of things! I have spent a lot of energy and time and have gotten grumpy and stressed out to do a lot of things. But those things WILL NOT ENDURE.

Now that I am in a position where I feel like I can’t get anything done, it dawns on me. That is the point! That is what God is trying to teach me…RIGHT NOW! His grace is sufficient and when I rest in Him, He is accomplishing things through me that are significant beyond my imagination. Like growing this little girl, one feeding at a time.

Someday my life might get easier. Someday I might have it down and be able to coast effortlessly through the day. Maybe. So I must make the most of this season…this wonderful and difficult season. Because this season of weakness is how God is showing me His amazing grace.

RIGHT NOW!

Are you overwhelmed? Does your life feel impossible? Do you feel completely inadequate and incompetent for the task before you? Good! You may be in just the right place…to see God do the impossible!

I am very familiar with the feeling that my life is out of control, being a mother of many children! I don’t often get to attend special conferences at my church, but I love to listen to the CDs of them at home. I was listening to a CD of Lesley-Anne Leighton talk about her amazing adventures as a missionary. God would regularly do miracles for her as she stepped out in faith. For example, she was taken into custody by Chinese authorities (China is very hostile to the Gospel of Jesus). She was miraculously released after she started speaking to the men in Chinese…and she didn’t know how to speak Chinese! She would do training schools all around the world to teach people to live a supernatural life like hers. As I listened to her teaching on this CD, she said she would share with us her strategy for living such a life. That caught my attention and I listened carefully; so much so that I remember what she said 9 years later. Her strategy was simple; she would follow Jesus wherever he led! This meant that she would get in over her head and watch God do the miracles on her behalf.

A new thought began to dawn in my mind. This was a great strategy for a missionary, traveling to hostile and dangerous parts of the world. But I knew that motherhood was a dangerous and perilous journey as well. Mothers needed miracles just as much as missionaries did! I knew that I needed some! And Lesley-Anne had just told me that it was actually a good thing that I was in over my head…because that is the place where God moves! My courage began to rise.

I had felt in over my head since my second baby showed up and didn’t get the memo from his big sister on how to sleep. He would cry louder than I had ever heard anyone cry, and deprive me of my sleep and almost my sanity! He continued these nighttime disturbances even after I became pregnant with number three.

I had felt overwhelmed since I had three little children and a special needs baby who required many doctors’ appointments and special care. I had no one close by to help and my husband, Chris often traveled for work, being gone for days or weeks at a time.

I had felt overwhelmed when I had three little children, a special needs two-year old and a five-week old baby boy AND Chris and I had to pack up our home, drive cross-country (praying the whole way that I wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel and kill us all!), and set up a new home in Pennsylvania.

I had felt overwhelmed since I had seven children, home schooled, and enrolled my special needs daughter in a therapy program that I was supposed to accomplish by myself, at home. The man in charge told me that Ashlyn’s therapy program would be fairly easy, only requiring 6 hours a day. I thought to myself, “How can I ever do that?” Yet I wanted to try, because I wanted her to be better so badly. I also felt that God had led me to this program for Ashlyn AND had led me to home school all the other children.

I would wake up at 5 am each morning, immediately feeling nervous about the coming day. My mind would instantly begin to churn with all I had to accomplish and the fact that it was nearly impossible to do so. Life felt like a test, and I would pass the test only if I could accomplish everything I my to-do list. But almost every night I would go to bed with tasks left undone and the feeling of failure. There were a few rare days that I finished everything and thought briefly that I had succeeded…only to look back over my day and realize that I had plowed over everything and everyone who stood in my way. My victory was meaningless, because I did it without love, and my children suffered.

Thinking on these past failures, I would go from being nervous to panicking!!! Lying in bed in the morning, trying to work up the courage to face my impossible day, I would pray.

“Oh, God! I want to love my children today! I want to do therapy with Ashlyn so she can be well! I want to do home school with my children so they will be smart! But I have so many other things I need to do! I should have been up hours ago! There is no way I can do this. This is IMPOSSIBLE! I am in WAY OVER MY HEAD!”

Then one day I was quiet enough to hear the Spirit’s still small voice.

“This day is not a test, it is a gift! I want you to open your eyes and see all the treasures I have hidden for you in this day. Let me bless you in the midst of your business. You are right, my child. Your life is impossible. I designed it that way. I never intended for you to live a safe, easy, comfortable life. I didn’t design you to merely do the possible. I am the God of the impossible, remember! I designed you to do the impossible through me! I can’t fully show my glory unless the situation is Impossible. All that I do through your life is changing eternity. So be at rest. Be at peace. I AM in control.”

That voice changes everything for me! It immediately tears the veil between my crazy, earthy life and the Holy of Holies. I can step out of the temporary and step into the eternal. I can step out of my failures and step into the finished work of Christ. My life takes on a while new significance when I realize that the Most Holy God wants to dwell with me and do miracles through me! And what could be more miraculous than living with so many children and having perfect peace!

Now we have eight children and a ninth baby that takes a lot of time and resources – a new business! I have so many things to do at home, and Chris has so many things to do at our sign shop. I try to help him at the shop and he tries to help me at home, all the while being mindful of our precious children. We are busy almost all of the time. What little “free” time we have is not really free. We are so selective about how we spend our time, trying fiercely to follow Jesus and no one else. There isn’t time and energy and devotion to waste on anything less! It is going to take a miracle to raise our children the way we should AND make our business successful. Both Chris and I are sure that we are in WAY OVER OUR HEADS! Yet we know that Jesus led us here and through him we are doing miracles.

I am so encouraged by Mark Batterson and what he wrote in The Circle Maker.“If you’ve never been overwhelmed by the impossibility of your plans, then your God is too small.”

So are you in over your head? If you got into this situation by following someone other than Jesus, start following him now and just see what he will do! If it was Jesus who got you into the crazy mess called your life, let your heart take courage! This is his specialty, doing miracles through little you! So relax, let go, and enjoy riding on his waves of grace…and expect signs and wonders to follow you.