I don’t have to know where I’m going anymore. I’m fine with riding passenger. It’s taken a while to get rid of the bad theology of “The American Dream” (or most of it, I hope). I’m not the “master of my fate” or the “captain of my soul” as stated in Invictus. I’m content, joyful even, to know Jesus is leading me. Even with so many reasons to be discontented, I’ve found God has given me contentment. I’m less “in control” than I have ever been. I honestly don’t even know what this summer or next year will look like, what I’ll be doing, or if things will resolve in so many respects. Yet I know this is where God has led me. So how can I have contentment without any “game plan”?

It’s the time of year that many people look back on the year that is drawing to a close and highlight all the good or say “good riddance” and wish for a better year to come. I’ve thought often about what this year means to me in retrospect. It was certainly an “ebenezer” year, and I wish I had an actual stone to put somewhere in remembrance. It was a year I saw a true miracle: God spared my husband’s life when he had, at best, a 2% chance of survival. It was incredible, undeniable and I will never be the same or stop being grateful that we can all still be together as a family. But we can’t tie up our story with a nice bow. We can’t say “God saved Jonathan and this is why.” I can’t negate the dark valley I walked through afterwards or the fact that Jonathan still lives with a medical condition that gives him pain and hinders normal activity. He still can’t run around in the yard with our kids and he’s not back to 100%. The discouragement and limitations that continual nagging pain causes is hard for us both, especially because it looks like there may not be any resolution on the horizon apart from another miracle of God. 

Limitations can be blessings if we let them. Have you ever thought of how most songs, even something as complicated as a piece in a symphony, is technically comprised of only 7 different notes of a single scale? The art of painting is even more limited. All the colors used come from a mere 3 primary colors. Drawing is mostly made up of 3 shapes: circles, triangles, and rectangles. All the beauty of nature cycles through 4 seasons, year after year after year. Whole worlds are created from these limited means.

The hardships I’ve been through, this past year especially, have felt like falling overboard in the middle of the ocean and plunged into icy depths. The undertow is stronger than my ability to push upwards, and am horrified to find my struggle only takes me deeper and deeper down. My only hope left is God, and without His help I will certainly drown. Maybe you’ve been there too. There are in life those moments that take all the breath from your lungs and all the strength from your body and soul. All the light of day becomes small fragmented beams that dance mockingly on the surface of what pulls you under.

I remember when I was in the throws of having newborn twins, moving into a new house, and starting a new homeschool year. We had just transitioned from three kids to five. It was a continual cycle of feedings, meal making, school, feedings, and naps. Rinse and repeat all day. To be honest I was living in survival mode, constantly stressed and frazzled. I never got much of a break and was needed nearly 24/7. I wanted to find joy in my numerous blessings, my five kids, and our life, instead of drowning in all the work it took to keep everyone alive and fed. I wanted to be a calm and gentle mom, not a stressed-out mom. I wanted God’s peace, not a constantly hectic feeling.

Our sweet little Elias broke his collarbone last week. It was pretty rough to see him so pitiful and hurting. After his accident he wasn’t very responsive, which was so scary for me to experience so soon after Jonathan’s emergency surgery and ICU stay. At the ER I watched him being scanned by the same machines that had just scanned my husband and hooked up to heart rate and oxygen monitors, all of which felt eerily similar to what I’d just been though. As I sat in the ER room waiting for answers about our son, I wondered why God would allow this to happen as I was just finding healing from nearly losing my husband. I couldn’t hold back the tears as my precious son grimaced in pain and the surroundings took me back to those trying days in the ICU.