Looking for the Mustard Seed

I got the wind knocked out of me this week.

I question whether I truly do believe in the God I say I believe in, or the Jesus I profess to know… because at any moment my husband might not have a job to support us.

I hurt because I can’t reach my husband in his despair over his possible job loss. I hear him whisper in the dark night as he lies there sleepless, “I wish I was dead.” And I pretend to be asleep but all day long I carry around, heavy in my heart, this thought. He wishes he was dead. The burden is too much for him to bear alone.

When I pray, I find myself speechless before an invisible King that just days ago I knew I knew and I knew He knew me. My trust is a single, fraying thread and I am so tired I think I might just let that thread snap, and spiral down into the pit of hopelessness that pulls on us like gravity. Because I can’t be strong now. The ground beneath my feet shifts and shakes. I am sinking.

So again I tell God I’ve got another tangled ball of string for Him. I whisper it in a sort of secret desperation in the school parking lot, and then I put on my everything-is-fine face for my small son, grip his little hand and walk him to school where hopefully he will live out his day blissfully untouched by the fear and the struggle of his parents. I am afraid to speak it too loudly or I will crumble. I hold on and hold on and hold on while inside I am so frightened I can barely breathe.

I remember the birds, how God counts them and provides for them, the lilies of the field, the hairs of my head. I hide from God, ashamed of my weakness, my quick tendency to not believe Him, or any of it, all the things He’s taught me in my 43 years of life, all the things He’s shown me in His living Word, all the truly miraculous life lessons, all the ways He has saved me. I am angry at God for not doing the things in my heart I always secretly wished He would do for me, and then remember I don’t deserve for my little, self-serving wishes to come true. That’s not what this is about. As much as I want it to be, it's not about me and my easy life and my small happiness.  Because God said it’s not.

I am not in control of what happens to me. I am utterly at the mercy of circumstance, or Fate, or God’s Will.

I feel afraid. I am powerless in my weakness. I do not trust God, or my own ability to perceive there is a God. I do not understand why He hasn’t helped me. I am angry He does not help my husband in this scary time. I am angry at my husband for not trusting God. I don’t know what to pray. My throat aches from all the threatening tears I have swallowed back. My eyes are dry and I am paralyzed in my nakedness and in my faithlessness and in my need. It’s not pretty. It does not make sense. It is a gnarled up ball of string, hopelessly tangled, and I hold it here in my lap and look at it, because I’m afraid if I hand it up to Jesus, He will drop it.

He will drop me.

Stripped of all the bulky garments of lies I layer on myself daily—all the false security—what I am is a frightened, faithless weakling. Facing even just the possibility of inconvenience, change, hard work, hardship, or depression reveals this to be so. I loathe myself for my failing to be anything at all like Job, who, when faced with REAL loss and REAL pain, said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

 
Now I don’t say “Blessed be the name of Lord” because I am super-spiritual or full of faith.  I say it because God sees me here in my nakedness, in my ugly faithlessness, just the way I am, and does not give up on me. I understand now that trials come to reveal us for who we are, or aren’t, and that if we let them, they will teach us again just how very much God is there for us in spite of our glaring undeservingness. 

I look again for the mustard seed that was lost to me before.  I know I have it.