Loving the Unlovable

It all started around 3am. Clementine woke up calling for me, but because Alan doesn't actually ever fully wake up during the night, he is assigned nighttime duty for the girls. If I wake up, I can't get back to sleep, and will just lie awake for hours, and then have a pounding headache in the morning because my body is high maintanance and needs exactly 8 hours of sleep each night. It's better for everyone if Alan tends to the girls since he never really wakes up he can go right back to sleep. Well, maybe it's not the best case scenario for our kids, but they're resilient, remember? Alan went to Clementine's room and she was not satisfied with him. By "not satisfied" I mean she was screaming hysterically for me with no calming down. I went in because I just couldn't see the situation getting any better with a half-asleep husband and a fully hysterical toddler. She calmed down immediately, and I put her back to bed. I however, could not fall asleep. She woke up 2 more times, then Olive woke up once because she was cold. I finally went back to sleep around 5:30, but broken sleep just isn't the same.

I tried to tell myself it was going to be a great day. Well, it's NOT been a great day. Olive has been acting not like herself--quite clingy, demanding, crying. I woke up feeling very overwhelmed, almost discouraged, about all things Mexico. Turns out that when I feel overwhelmed or discouraged, writing is great therapy. It's really hard to write when I don't have time or space to think. That was this morning.

We came home from an exhausting playdate (not because I didn't enjoy the company, but because I was trying to hold myself together the entire time) and thank God my girls went right to bed. I was literally hanging on by a thread emotionally and I just needed some space.

It's really easy to love my kids when they are super loveable and compliant and pleasant. Anyone can do that. I believe somewhere in some book Jesus talks about loving those who are unloveable, and how THAT is real love. Ouch. Somehow I tell myself that it's okay to be short with my kids (and other people) or stressed or angry because of the way they are acting. It seems normal...and it is. But Jesus is asking me to be not-normal. He's asking me to love with His love--the kind that doesn't make any normal sense. But it's so hard (said in my whiny voice). Yeah, it is. It's mostly hard though because I'm trying to love like Christ without Christ's help. I can only pull from the "love reserves" for so long before I crack. I only have so much grace in me until someone has crossed a line. God has grace upon grace, which I can dwell in and pull from continually, if I choose. But there it is: if I choose. How many times do I choose something else to fill the void or to minimize the stress? I'm choosing mere distractions from the real issue: I need to experience God's grace and love fo' real.

And so today, it felt like I was gasping for breath--emotional and spiritual breath. It doesn't happen often where I am literally desperate to talk to God. But today, I was desperate to read His truth and talk to him and share my burdens with him and be silent so he could share with me. Isn't this where he wants to find me always? Isn't it in this place of desperation that I am most in communion with Him? And so I read the passage for today and I'm continually amazed how a text that was published almost 85 years ago seems like it was written for me today.

Alan and I are both reading My Utmost for His Highest and almost everyday I'm floored. In a good way. Today was no exception. O.C. (that's his street name) first distinguished between the burden-bearing that is right and the kind that is wrong. He then goes on to say that if God has put the burden on us, he is not expecting us to carry it alone. He wants to shoulder it with us. We are not to abandon the burden (or dream or vision or calling), but we are to continue to put it on him and ourselves. Trying to carry the burden without intimate fellowship with Christ produces weariness and feels "overwhelmingly crushing". Sounds a lot like motherhood. And like our plans to move to Mexico.

How I needed to hear this today. If God has given me the blessing of children, he wants to shoulder this calling. I don't have to do it alone. And if he has asked our family to pick up everything we know and move it to a faraway land, he wants to shoulder it, too. He's not going to give me a burden and expect me to carry it on my own. How amazingly refreshing to have that reminder.

Then I read a passage in Ephesians that talked about how Jesus sacrificed his life for me while I was still dead in my transgressions. He loved me when I was unloveable and still loves me as I am unloveable on a daily basis. This is the love that I too am called to give to my kids and others. To love the unloveable.

My prayer for today is to dwell in the grace of God and to continue to share the load with him.

- M