Discouraged Much? Me Too!

April 29, 2018 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 4 Comments

I was looking forward to 2018 with great expectations. This is what I wrote in my journal about the coming year.

The Best is Yet to Come

Best Year Yet

Open Doors

God Encounters

Becoming Eagles

When the New Year arrived, it came in a way that I didn’t expect. During January and February I became very discouraged. Three major sorrows had come upon me.

Sorrow #1 – I felt sicker than I ever had in my life

I discovered that I was carrying a new child of destiny in my womb. It was a dream come true, and I was elated! I felt wonderful with my last pregnancy, so I thought this one would be even better. Wrong! I had never felt so weird and nauseous before. I had never thrown up so much before! I have never had hot flashes and cold chills before.

When I believed that 2018 would be the year that I would become an eagle, I imagined writing more. So many beautiful God stories were in my heart, crying out to be crafted into words. Maybe I would even put together a manuscript and work on a book! For Christmas my husband and children surprised me with a new laptop…OF MY VERY OWN! I was so surprised and excited!

I also thought I would be able to be more involved at church. Oh, all the beautiful times of prayer and worship and God encounters that awaited me!

Yet January and February found me sitting on the sofa or sleeping in my bed with a weak body and a fuzzy brain. It was hard to think about anything except how to avoid throwing up again. I tried to write, but I couldn’t. Sitting at the computer even for a few minutes made me feel even sicker! (It still does so this article was a bit of a struggle to produce.) I didn’t go to church at all.

Sorrow #2 – Finances

God was going do wonderful things in our finances this year. I was sure of it! Early in the New Year Chris got promoted to full-time at UPS. This was amazing, happening more quickly than usual. However, it didn’t play out so well in real life. First of all, peak was over, so his hours went from 70 hrs to 50-55 hrs a week. That is normal, just life at UPS. However, because of a rule that says all full-time employees have to be paid for at least 8 hours each day they are called in to work, Chris lost the opportunity to pick up 4 hours of air-rate overtime on Saturdays. This had a significant impact on each paycheck. In addition, full-time employees have to pay more union dues. We had less instead of more, and it was feeling like a struggle again.

Sorrow #3 – Lack of Healing

It has been difficult for me to believe in miraculous healing. I do believe theoretically, but I just haven’t had much experience in my own life. This year I felt faith arising! Perhaps this was the time that I would see healing with my own eyes! We were planning a double foot surgery for Ashlyn, but what if God would heal her first?

I took Ashlyn to a healing room. It was lovely, and the people were beautiful, and I felt the goodness of God. Prayers were prayed, but nothing happened with Ashlyn that I could see.

They also prayed for me for two specific health problems. The following week those two issues became significantly worse. Talk about being discouraged!

One of those issues was varicose veins. I had bad veins in my right leg since my 4^th pregnancy which was 14 years ago. 14 years of no shorts, no dresses. 14 years of feeling rather ugly and old. Last June I had the worst vein removed and the faulty vein repaired. It took three days of surgery with local anesthesia. It required one incision and 58 small holes. The recovery was more painful than I had expected, and I wondered if it was really worth it.

It was supposed to heal and leave me with a normal looking leg. Yet I had to attend my daughter’s High School Graduation in baggy, frumpy pants to accommodate the bandages. I developed a dream in my heart that encouraged me greatly. My son’s graduation would be next June. I would attend that important event in a pretty summer dress!

In this New Year, I was so excited to be pregnant without those horrible veins! No pain, no awful compression stockings! As this pregnancy progressed, I noticed pain in my leg again. It was awhile before I realized that it was new veins popping out on the back of my leg. The leg that still bore 59 little scars. Slowly the veins traveled down my entire leg. After receiving prayer, they began to hurt so much that I had to wear a compression stocking.

My beautiful dream had officially died a pathetic and mournful death!

The Sorrows are so small

Now that I am in my second trimester, I can look at my life and see a hundred joys outnumbering those three little sorrows. I can give thanks for a thousand different blessings each day!!!

Still, I feel discouraged. If only things were a little different in certain areas. If only I didn’t feel my faith slipping away.

One Sunday morning during worship I gave my discouragement to God. Still I wished for my sorrows to be gone. Then God helped me to realize.

There is something Deeper (than my reality).

There is something more Real (than my circumstances).

There is something more Important (than my discouragement).

Like this baby growing healthy and strong. Like the delight that God has when He looks at me. Like the fact that this suffering is nothing compared to the glory that will be revealed in me, the glory that will be revealed in my daughter. Like my character being formed into the character of Christ.

Like Becoming An Eagle!

I had asked God to transform me into an eagle this year. To help me to worship Him until the wind of His presence surrounded me. To help me to stretch out my wings in faith. To teach me to fly. To teach me to see EVERYTHING from His higher perspective.

He has been answering my prayer this whole time. No one ever learns to do something new without practice. All these sorrows are training me to rise above and SEE!

“Your eyes will see the King in his beauty, and the highlands of heaven far away.” Is 33:17 Living Bible

This has been His promise to me. I have asked Him to help me live in it. I have asked for a difficult thing…

But it is worth it!

P.S. Just a note to all of my followers. I am so delighted that you enjoy my writing! I probably will not be posting much until August or September when I hope that I will be reconciled to my laptop. Praying you will bask in all the joys!

P.P.S. Ashlyn’s surgery well very well! She has been recovering beautifully and I am so thankful.

The Very Poopy Christmas of 2008

December 16, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 1 Comment

I hope this story isn’t too personal or gross to qualify as a heartwarming Christmas tale, but this was all I had within me during the very poopy Christmas of 2008.

We had a beautiful Blue Spruce standing in our living room. The Christmas decorations had been brought up from the basement. The soothing voice of Bing Crosby was coming through the stereo. Ah, this is just like the Christmases from my sweet childhood memories. Well…not quite the same. There were six children instead of two scrambling to grab Christmas decorations. The older children seemed to clump all the decorations onto one section of the tree, while the younger children were intent on pulling them off as soon as they were put on.

I was not feeling as excited this year about decorating as in my youth. Yes, the exhaustion and nausea of my first trimester was definitely putting a damper on my Christmas spirit. I realized that the tree was being trimmed rather haphazardly, and it was leaning slightly to the left. Yet I had no energy to fix it.

“Oh well,” I thought, “It will just have to lean this year.” Truly my deepest heart’s desire was to crawl into bed and sleep until New Years. There was also a strange smell drifting through the house that was never present in my childhood memories.

Clang! Bang! Loud noises were emanating from the downstairs bathroom. Chris was entirely missing the tree trimming this year because of a project in the bathroom. Earlier in the week our toilet began backing up. After it got clogged for the 7^th time, our oldest boy Cole spoke up.

“Oh yeah, I remember that I saw Cooper drop a toy in the toilet and then he flushed!” he offered. I suspected that the toilet clogger was really Cole himself…yet Cooper does have an unusual fascination with the potty. Chris was in the bathroom having to rip the entire toilet off of the floor.

“I found the toy but I can’t get it out!” yelled Chris in frustration.

“Try putting oil on it!” I suggested.

“There’s enough poop on it!” He yelled back.

“I don’t think poop is very lubricating.” I said.

“I AM THE EXPERT ON POOP AROUND HERE!” he bellowed.

Considering the smell and the amount of time Chris had been working, I believed him!

Our tree eventually got trimmed.

The bathroom got put back together. Yet I prayed “God, there has to be more to the Brandenburg Christmas this year, more than nausea and broken toilets.”

Then I thought of Mary having to birth her first baby alone, in a stable. It probably didn’t smell too good either. Yet she had angels come sing praises to her baby. And of course there were the shepherds and wise men who came to confirm what she knew in her heart; that her baby was a King. Those visitations must have helped her through some difficult days ahead.

In these difficult days it is hard to see the purpose in our crazy, exhausting lives. I had no angels singing when my children were born. Yet I had something even better – The Word of the Lord! I heard God saying at the birth of each of my children, “This is a chosen one. I knew this one before I made the world and he has a destiny. She will conquer mountains and do great exploits for me!”

When I see the mess that my house is right now and the mess that my children make, I keep my eyes on eternity. I can see each child standing before the throne of God. I see Jesus embracing each one and calling him or her his friend. I see their reward for the spoils they took from the enemy. I know that their reward is my legacy. And here is the key to my hope. I know that all this is true; not because I am a good mother but because GOD SAID it was true.

So I thank God for this holiday season with all of its promise. Promise that is symbolized by a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a stinky manger!

God Needs Me?

July 5, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 3 Comments

“He can do all things without us, but He had chosen to do them through us.” – The Call by Rick Joyner

I was pregnant with baby number eight. It had been three years since my last pregnancy, and I felt the strongest, the healthiest, the most alive I had ever felt! That was…until the morning sickness settled in. It was actually “all day but much worse in the evening sickness”. I had not felt horribly nauseous during my previous pregnancies, more like continuous car sickness. How I had wished I could stop the invisible car and just get out! I was optimistic that this pregnancy would be the exception, that I could say with a smile on my face and a twinkle in my eye, “I love being pregnant!”

Just the opposite had happened. I had never felt so bad! My days consisted of sitting on the sofa with my eyes closed, trying to feel better. My children ran around unattended. Home school, which we should have started a month ago, remained untouched. My older children did all the chores around the house and kept it running, though not as orderly or smoothly as I would have. My precious firstborn girl, Areli, carried an enormous burden. She heard my pitiful pleas all day long.

“Areli, could you make me some eggs?”

“Areli, could you fill up my water glass?”

“Areli, could you see who is crying upstairs, please?”

I tried to be a good mom; but mostly I whined, moaned, slept, felt sick, got sick, and slept some more. I felt useless and wretched. I knew theoretically that despite the weakened state of my body, my spirit could still soar high above my circumstances, like an eagle above the clouds. Yet, after days, weeks, and months of feeling crummy, my eagle had forgotten how to fly. My mind kept thinking about scriptures such as

“For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!” 2 Cor 4:17

I knew that it was true, but it didn’t help me feel any better.

I thought about my joy in a newborn baby and how it was all worth it.

But it didn’t make me feel any better.

I reread every “Above Rubies” magazines I had ever received to encourage myself.

My mind was encouraged but my flesh still felt miserable!

My body felt like it was not capable to getting up off the sofa and doing anything productive or enjoyable, yet my mind continued to churn, swirling in descending circles.

“I just want to die. I can’t live like this. Why do I have to suffer? Why does God allow me to feel so horrible?”

Pregnancy is such a miracle, a blessing, a gift! So why did I feel so bad? My suffering was nothing compared to other women I knew, who kept almost nothing down for nine months, yet my suffering felt like too much for me to bear.

The question I kept asking was, “Is this worth it?” and I knew that it was. A new life is always worth it. After a mother is holding that precious bundle, her sorrow is turned into joy.

Then the question became, “How much is a human life worth? How much pain and sorrow is one life worth? How much would I suffer for one human life? Would I get pregnant and do this all again for one more human life? How much is a life worth to God? How much suffering did Jesus endure?”

The only conclusion I could come to was this; one human life is worth IT ALL! There is no limit to the value God puts on a life, no price too high to pay, no suffering too severe. Jesus suffered more than any of us. He went through betrayal, slander, hatred, lies, scourging, mocking, and the cruelest execution ever conceived. He felt the wretched, incurable sickness of the evil of the entire world. And he bore the effects of that twisted iniquity; separation with all that is good and beautiful and holy, his Father.

He said that his suffering was worth it because of the joy set before him. (Hebrews 12:2) That joy was human life, redeemed and set free. He said that I am worth it. He said that you are worth it. He said that the child in my womb was worth it. If Jesus was willing to suffer for my child, shouldn’t I? After the suffering of His soul, he saw the light of life (my life, your life, my child’s life) and he was satisfied. (Isaiah 53:11)

I knew that my suffering wasn’t in vain, but I still didn’t feel any better.

“God, give me a vision of this child! Something to keep me going,” I prayed.

In my mind’s eye I saw beams of life coming from this child and shooting out to the far reaches of the earth. This child would be a blessing to me and my family, yes. But he would also have an impact on the entire world! How? I have no idea! But if I could have some small part in sending life to the whole of mankind, sign me up!

Then I heard God’s loving voice.

“Thank you for being available. Without you, I couldn’t bring this child of destiny into the world.”

Then I felt the peace that only God’s voice can bring. I felt His gratitude sink deep into my soul until I was saturated by the unbelievable goodness of it. God needs me? The all powerful God NEEDS ME to be available? What if I had said that seven children were quite enough, and that there were too many children in the world already? THIS particular child, with unique DNA from his father and from me that could never be duplicated, would have never existed! His very individual purpose and destiny would have never been manifested. His precious personality, which was a dream in God’s heart since before the world began (Ephesians 1:4), would have never been realized. And now he exists…because of me! I cannot think of anything more powerful. I cannot think of any higher honor for God to give me, than helping Him to create something of inestimable value and eternal impact.

I never could say during that pregnancy that I enjoyed being pregnant. But I could say that pregnancy was when I relied on God the most and sensed His presence the closest and felt His glory the heaviest. And the moment that precious Babe was born…I could say…