Don't lose heart...

Don’t lose heart.

This is a concept that doesn’t necessarily come easily to those who have experienced deep pain.  I mean, who HASN’T experienced pain?  It all looks different, right?  Whether it is the loss of a parent, death of a pet, divorce, a near drowning of your child, traumatic pregnancies, your baby dying in your arms, your child suffering with cancer…in one way or another we have all felt pain.  We have all struggled and we all mourn and grieve in our own way. Who am I to say mine is worse?  It isn’t.  Plain and simple.  Everybody carries their pain a different way. 

Why does it feel like I am stuck in this rut, unable to move on, unable to cope?  Why does it feel like other people who are going through unspeakable amounts of pain can keep going?  What is it about me that is so different? It’s because I have lost heart.  My anxiety levels are reeling and pushing me to my max.  My depression is making me long for an outlet.  As the dam of my feelings is beginning to leak, I am beginning to drown in the swell of it all…desperately searching for air, praying that help will come. 

Me losing heart, losing faith in life has not only affected how I feel about the loss of my mom, but it has also affected who I am as a person.  I am now a doubter, a pessimist.  I assume the worst.  I don’t trust anyone or anything.  I watch movies and I wait for someone to die or something bad to happen.  Sometimes it isn’t the case.  Sometimes even hard movies don’t have some horrible ending.  Sometimes, even in true stories, there are happy endings.

We watched 42 last night and I kept wincing, waiting for a car accident or something bad to happen to his wife.  It was not necessarily an easy watch anyway, but I was just waiting for it to be worse.  But it wasn’t.  Nobody died, and that was actually refreshing.  My life used to be more like that, where I was shocked that something bad happened rather than being shocked that nothing bad happened.

I have lost heart.  It truly affects everything that I do.  For example, I assumed that my kids weren’t going to make it to school.  I just assumed that the funds were not going to come in.  There is no possible way that we can financially put one kid in the school, let alone two! When we got approved for the full $10,000 scholarship but only awarded $1100 per kid, I assumed the worst.  I really have lost heart.  I have lost faith.  I expect everything to be bad.

We received the news and I then wrote a letter to friends and family begging for tax donations and help.  My letter this year was short and to the point where as in my letter last year I poured my heart out.  Why was my letter this year so bland?  I think it is because I really did not have any hope that it would work out.  Why would I get my hopes up in order to just be let down again? 

But then it happened.  Not only did I have two family members agree to help out with some of our amount due for this month, but later in the week I got a letter that we have received some more scholarship money.  It does not cover all that we owe for the year…but it is a good chunk that will be disbursed in October.  It was an unexpected and a sweet reminder that everything is not always bad. It was a reminder that I should not expect the bad things and be surprised by the good, but to expect the good things and be surprised by the bad. 

We also had a couple that we went to school with offer to put in some tax money around tax time and even our landlord forwarded my letter to people that he knew.  This was a sweet reminder of how Kylie was able to be blessed enough to go there last year.  It seems to be the most unexpected people that are lead to send my kids to school.  God lead a few different people last year to help donate and without their donations, it would not have happened.  These people were people that I knew in high school, one family was someone that I went to school with; another was someone whom I had gotten to know in Mexico City one year.  Needless to say that other than Facebook, they were not people that we had really stayed close to or even had much of relationships with. 

It was such a God-thing to me that He would use these people, someone whom I would never imagine cared about me or my family, to partner with us to send our kids to school.  These are hardworking people who sacrificed their time, prayers, and finances in order to send my kid, whom they had never even met, to a good private school.  Kylie receiving a God-honoring education was impressed upon their hearts and it was so beyond me.  Why would I think it would be any different this year?

I have lost heart so much that what is clearly a God ordained conviction in us became a point of distrust in my heart.  It took an old teacher of mine to remind me of the faithfulness of God.  When she did I went back and reread my blogs from last year and it was the same struggle, and the same God who patiently reminded me that I could fully trust Him with the well-being and the education of my kids. 

Why have I lost heart?  There are constant little miracles around me.  Why am I stuck in such a cloud to not see them?  I need so badly to stop focusing on drowning in this dam of depression and emotion and truly just focus upwards.  Like Alex when he is swimming and is suddenly afraid of drowning, a lot of the time I just forget that I am in the shallow end and can just stand up!  And those times that the water truly is too deep?  Instead of giving up, instead of losing heart, I need to remind myself that I am not alone and that I don’t need to fight it.  My Abba Father is right there to pull me out, just like when Alex is struggling and feels like he is in too deep, I am right there to help him and pull his face out of the water, to remind him to trust me, that I will never allow anything bad to happen to him. 

I am feeling encouraged today, that we are not alone here, that God has a plan for us and will meet us where we are.  After my mom died, my grandma moved, and my dad and sister moved, I felt very abandoned.  Suddenly we have some family around us, some blood, some not, and it doesn’t feel so lonely.  We are no longer an island here just wasting away, but we are loved, even by people we barely know. 

I appreciate each and every one of you.  I cannot begin to thank you enough.  Everyone I have met has had an impact in my life one way or another and I am so grateful for those of you that have not given up on me yet! I am still in process, I am not finished.  But today I am choosing to not lose heart.