me again.

Thank you so much for your prayers and for keeping company with me on this blog.

Your prayers are helping us.  David and I feel cautiously optimistic that the worst is over.

I am gaining a little strength back.  I have been able to get up several times during the day and am not needing sleep as much.  Over the past couple days I have done some laundry, chopped veggies for dinner, and changed a few diapers . . . which feels like a victory.

I still get exhausted so easily.  I want more than anything to take care of my kids, but I can’t be around them very long before their boisterousness overwhelms me.  So we have a new plan: sending one kid into the bedroom to have “alone time with Mommy” for thirty minutes or so.  Judah and I cuddled under the covers this morning, me with a cup of coffee, and read three Berenstein Bears books together.  I think this cheers all of us up.

If you are a young mom, you probably can’t imagine anything more blissful than laying in bed, sleeping and staring into space as much as you want, waited on hand and foot, watching every BBC period movie ever made.

That was a dream of mine too.  And the bliss lasted, oh about five days.  But now I’m bored.  And more than that, I feel guilty.  My anxiety has been in overdrive.  God is revealing — once again — how much identity I find in my performance.  Now that is stripped away, some days I feel so worthless I want to die.  And worse than that, I get angry with God.  As in, What are you doing!?  Don’t you know this is a horrible idea??  Don’t you know how inefficient this is, how much more I could do for my family, for my neighbors, for you, if I were healthy??

Hmmm.

There’s a lot of pride being dug up in my heart right now.

When I was in bed two weeks ago, unable to move or speak to anyone, David met with my counselor over Skype to ask what we should do.  She said, “You know, in the long run, I don’t think it matters that much what you guys end up doing.  Stay in South Asia.  Move back home.  Move to a different country.  What really matters right now is your heart.  What are you doing with the questions and anger and fear?  Are you running to God for help?  Or are you hardening up with bitterness?”

Is she kidding??  This is not what I want to hear.  What I want to hear, plain and simple, is that if I do this sacrificial thing by living overseas, I will be worth more in the eyes of God and men.

I am sharing with you one of the darkest parts of my heart, and it is not easy.  I want you to think I’m humble.  But how could I give the glory to God that way?

My counselor is completely right.  What good is it for me to be a missionary — or a follower of Jesus anywhere — if my heart is filled up with pride and is anxiously grasping for the praise of people?  It seems like I’d spend an awful lot of time and energy defending my reputation and image and looking for recognition instead of loving people.

It’s a hard thing to be shown you are more sinful and broken than you thought.

But you know what, there’s a ray of hope.  Countless hours in my bed have begun to quiet my heart.  I reach for my Bible more readily now, because I desperately need to know what I have to live for — no matter what happens in our future.  And the more I read, the more I see that the New Testament writers talk an awful lot about the heart too.  As if that’s all that really matters.  The more I read, the more help I find for people just like me.  People who have been pushed beyond the limits of their talents and skills and ability to love, and are left exposed and helpless.

Today I give thanks for the gift of seeing more of my sin, and for Jesus, who will go to any length to have my heart.

What a God we have!  And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus!  Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to life for, including a future in heaven — and the future starts now!  God is keeping careful watch over us and the future.  The day is coming when you’ll have it all — life healed and whole.

I Peter 1.3-5, The Message