I have given you fair warning. It's in the title. So if you don't want to hear about it, move on.
Summertime is most inconveniently the busiest time for me and my job. I say inconvenient, because my usual 8-10 hours a week jumps up to 20 on average for at least 6 to 8 weeks. Remember, it's summertime. The kids are home. There is no routine save for the one I create. I become a Camp Councelor Extraordinaire. When a good friend told me that there was a nearby church having a daytime VBS the last week in July, my heart started singing. I could send the girls for the morning and work! I would have 10 to 14 hours of work under my belt before we left for the beach! Truly, I thought, this was God's provision.
Until Monday afternoon, when I found one of the girls with a head full of lice. How did I know? Her hair was in a ponytail, and there were those nasty red bumps behind her ear, bug bites. My heart's song stopped. I knew what it was. Knew I didn't really need to look to make sure. Knew my entire plan just got flipped upside down. Flipped upside down, kicked around and spit on.
13 bags of linens, stuffed animals, clothes and pillows that spent 2 weeks in our attic to kill any lice not sucked up by the vacuum cleaner or dried in the drier.
I called a close friend for help and ran outside so the girls wouldn't hear the details of the plan of action, or hear my desperation. My dear friend went straight to my heart, not my circumstance, and said "this is not the worst thing to happen to you." Her words of truth immediately calmed the growing anxiety in my heart. I had not yet lost it, because I had not yet understood how utterly exhausted and stripped I would be from this ordeal. But she knew. Because she had done it once. And remembers how hard it is. And was willing to share how it doesn't have to be so hard.
This post is not really about our head lice ordeal (which 3 of 5 of us had). The head lice was the beginning of yet another time period where God forced my dependence on Him through seemingly random, uncontrollable and boringly normal circumstances. For 7 weeks, the predictable suburban life was more than I could bear: 16 days of lice inspecting. Packing for the beach for 8 days, with in-laws as an audience to watch the continued lice checks. Sick toddler at beach, prescribed steroids for wheezing, who we got to share a room with (read: no sleep). Working during vacation. School starting. Hit a parked car. Ryan clocking 60 to 80 hours a week at the office. Sick kids and parents. Blown tire. $750 for car and tires. $250 in medical expenses.
At some point, more than once, I finally did lose it. Sobbed those big, ugly, selfish, angry, hot, "why me??!" tears. You've never done that? Then I may not understand you at all. The most painful thing was not dealing with the happening, but the battle I was having against my flesh. All this junk, it's life. It will happen. But because of Jesus, I have a choice to make. I can choose to be gracious to my family, patient in all affliction, and persevere. But the choosing, oh my word. It is the most exhausting part of all. At times I felt a physical pain in choosing to do what Jesus died for me to be able to do over what I wanted to do. Which was throw things and scream.
Oswald Chambers writes in My Utmost for His Highest, "if we are in fellowship and oneness with God and recognize that He is taking us into His purposes, then we will no longer strive to find out what His purposes are."
Why? Why now?
He answers, dependence. Complete and inexusable.
Aren't I?
Never enough. You can always rely on me more.
How??
Stop looking for the why. Spend that energy in fellowship and oneness with Me. The why has already been answered.
In a sermon on July 30, I heard "pride puts God and me on opposite teams; He's an opponent, He is not for me. God is involved in my undoing because He is so personally offended by my pride." I Peter 5:6 calls me to humble myself. It is my responsibility to humble myself. Asking God "Why me?" is not a question coming from a humble heart. Essentially, I am telling God "how dare you!" Like Eve, my default mode is operating under the dangerous premise that God might be withholding something from me (Williams). And like He has shown me, I know the answer to "why?": dependence.
Having children was the beginning of the end of me. My undoing. For God's glory. Not that the actual children themselves are my undoing; but the event of bringing them into our homes as part of our family marked the beginning of the journey of my undoing. Much to my surprise, God uses the mundane to put me in situations that are excruciatingly normal in order for me to persevere. In order for me to long for Him. In order for me to long for the world beyond here. And to long to tell others that they have a choice, too. He is only limited by our trying to do his will our way, in our flesh (Clarkson, p. 209).
One of my dear friends lives far away in SE Asia. She is doing this mundane thing, but in a completely foreign land. Her hard is multiplied 1000x by the crazy, nonsensical-ness of an ancient, confusing culture. Her words to describe working out the ugliness of our flesh in everyday happenings are beautiful and encouraging. I have preached the truth in her words to myself daily: "There were a few days I was begging and waiting on those new mercies, and they weren't coming. But, the biggest mercy and the biggest grace was that I knew they would come!!!!"
"Sometimes, He required more of me than I was capable of giving, but He gave me more than I could ever have dreamed." (Clarkson)
Making beach cupcakes with Mimi.
The 1 hour T was actually happy on the beach all week.
Such a performer.
What T was like 99% of the week.
Rice Paddy plank.
10 year anniversary dinner date.
Being bears at Atalaya castle, home of the Huntingtons.
It was humid. T's hair is our barometer.
A deer? A bear?
Another lice treatment.
