I acknowledged again this morning that the last two years have changed me. Sometimes I wonder if the negative changes outweigh the positive ones.
My mind drifted to a story I read oh so long ago: The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It was a Minnesota winter that lasted 7-8 months, with blizzard after blizzard. Everyone struggled. The trains couldn’t run for months, so everyone was cold and hungry. People died. Laura and her family ate nothing but coarse brown bread twice a day toward the end of the winter. Years later Laura wrote about her little sister Carrie’s fragile health. Their mother spent years trying to coax Carrie to eat better with the best food that was available.
Not sure why the concept of trying to coax Carrie to eat better with the best food that was available with me all these years.
Until today.
Laura’s family endured a prolonged traumatic event. So have I, and so have you. Her mother spent the next several years trying to improve her daughter’s health the best way she knew how and with what she had available to her at the time: a better selection of food, access to medicine and doctors and a less stressful environment.
That’s what I am doing, and I expect that you are, too.
Are your go-to coping skills failing you like mine are failing me? I find myself overwhelmed with problems and tasks that were once easy but now are almost impossible to concentrate on. My ability to remain composed is limited these days. And, I am isolating myself because I find many of my support base is just as taxed as I am or they have no insight into my unique situation.
Lately, I feel like my “rock bottom” and my “best” are only inches apart. I don’t fall very far because I can’t seem to get any traction on moving forward. It’s not in my nature to stay down because I’ve worked too hard to climb out of what I call my misery pit that happened during my 20s. I never want to feel that way again.
Yesterday a friend texted me about her worry over the state of the world. She ended with “Jesus will make a way.”
Right now, I don’t see a way. But I also know that many people before me didn’t see a way either. Esther, Rahab, Elizabeth, Mary, and many others. This reminder brings me comfort when I feel like I’m failing as a mom less than an hour into my day.
I pause again. Take a breath. Share my concerns with Him.
And look for Him to “make a way” when I cannot see one.
