In the Weeds

I get really angry about my life sometimes. Do you, too?

It feels like days over and over where from the moment my feet hit the floor in the morning to the moment they finally curl up for the night in their woolly socks, I am at the service of others. Even in those dark hours between sleeping and waking, I am on call, because I am a mom. And sometimes the kiddo needs me in the middle of the night, and worries about my husband dying in his sleep keep me awake at odd hours, and frightening dreams keep me restless. There’s no time when I am off-duty: from my son, from my husband, and from my own wretched thoughts.

It’s easy to blame my family when I get weary of the day-in-and-day-out endless loop of life. I long for my family to need me less. I long for the kiddo to get himself dressed and take a bath without calling my name every two minutes. I wish I could go just one day without always being at the ready for when that voice calls me. I am always at the ready. Even when the kiddo is at school, I’ve got my phone nearby, just in case. There are no breaks. And it takes a toll on my mood, to say the least.

I get mad. I feel entitled to a break from mommy and wifely duties. The break never comes. I get madder. I look at my messy house and become overwhelmed with the burden of cleaning it all up. I write long, complaining rants about my plight and then hate myself for complaining so much and for being so angry and discontented.

Last week I really got stuck. I didn’t know what to do. I just knew this was no way to live. I was resentful all the time. So I let Jesus have it. I don’t know what to do with this mess I’m in, I told Him. I really see no solution, no way out of this place of bitterness I’m in, so… here ya go, God. Please, help me out.

Did a spa day miraculously fall out of the sky? What about a thousand dollars to spend as I wished for a few hours at the mall? No. Nothing like that.

But a miracle did happen. As I began to whisper my complaints to God in my heart, slowly and quietly, almost imperceptibly, my heart began to change.

I had to be willing to accept His instruction. I had to honestly seek His help. I had to admit my need for Him. And then I had to find that mustard-seed faith again under the giant pile of dust and laundry and streaky mirrors and dirty toilets—all the ugliness of my own daily failings: I don’t measure up, I can’t ever measure up—and believe my Father God sees me and knows me, and is always ready to help me, when I no longer have the answers, when I can’t see the way out of the weeds I’ve wandered into, when I’m all tangled up in my own ugliness and stuck in my own filth.

It’s been a long while since I’ve really come to grips with my sin. I think I sort of talk myself into believing God is so very happy with me and I am A.O.K. and life just skips along… and all the little selfish thoughts of my heart throughout the days, the lusts, the ingratitudes, the downright spite, pile up until I’m not skipping anymore, I’m not happy anymore, and God is nowhere to be found. I am in the weeds. And then it’s like trying to unravel a hopelessly tangled ball of string to get to the bottom of all my angst.

I hate that ball of string. I hate going down that winding road of thinking things through, of analyzing myself. This time, I threw it at God. Because I was exhausted by it and because I am exhausted by my own perpetual habit of getting all tangled up in the weeds of my own making. I never learn. It. Happens. Every. Time.

I don’t have to make myself all pretty for my God to pull me up out of the puddle of miry clay I choose to play in, and wash me off, put a clean garment on me, set me on His lap and embrace me. HE makes me pretty. I don’t have to release myself from the prison of the tangly weeds that grip me like so many greedy vines. In fact, I can’t. They are too strong for me.

I can say “here I am” in all my shame and nakedness, and my loving Father God will find me, free me, and set me to rights again.

Every. Single. Time.

He’ll do it for you, too.

Churchgirl