The Unpacking...

Since last post, I have been in a spiritual place of "Diagnosis/Analysis/Research." Over the last year, and especially the summer, I experienced so much: life, death, parting, and reunion. So much of the spiritual significance of these events caused so much pain in me, and my natural reaction to pain is to compartmentalize it. So....essentially.....when my poor husband reappeared, home from Iraq, I was a total compartmentalized mass, very tightly wound, emotional, and difficult to analyze.

I wrote the last post right before Ben arrived, and it was the first clue to unravelling the mass of Life and God that has been hurled at me over the year. My study of Genesis truly shed the first light of understanding of all This. The Curse--that is so real (Oh! Do you remember that Eve, the first mother of All the Living....had her son slain by her other son in a fit of jealousy? Oh, that pain!) ...... and, my cry for the Cure to be expressed in my life.

Since moving out here, and mourning the departure from my Virginia home, I've settled in, and recovered my mothering instincts. I have opened my eyes a bit, and noticed that they have been closed for a while....and I looked down to see my (emotional) fists clenched pretty tightly. This whirlwind of events has put me into a very protected, compartmentalized, "Survival" mode, and it has been a slow, tedious process getting out of it. But I have begun to let the light come into my eyes a little deeper. I have breathed. I have taken note of my surroundings. I see my children, now. I smell the smell of Home. I have begun looking around my "Room" and unpacking my little boxes of Disappointed Hope, and Bittered Sweetness. Inspecting them is hard. I have had to lift up a lot of those little boxes to my Father and say, "Here, this one hurts still. Will you fix it?" Once in a while, I'll unpack one I think is labeled, and find it contains something very different than I expected....and volatile. Sometimes I quickly close the box again for later. I still have to make it through the day.

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The Lord led us to a church here in Yelm. When we arrived, they were in the midst of "rebooting" their little congregation. The pastor was fairly new, only there about 3 years, and they were going through a season of restarting a lot of things, small groups, children's ministries, hiring a new worship leader, and renaming the church itself. We immediately felt latched into the people there, eager to begin this new journey with them. Then we heard we'd be studying Luke next. I dove into it when we got back last Sunday, and began to read......lo, and behold.....the story of the Great Plan for The Cure.

It has been 1 step forward, 2 steps back for me, making it through the fog of pain from the last year. I still cry a lot, and ask God why He didn't just overwhelm the earth's pain with His Goodness.....why does it have to be creeping? Why is the Way so narrow? But tiny gleams of the Mercies that surround me are beginning to shine in. Tonight Ben & Violet tickled on the living room floor. I laughed and laughed and laughed....and cried....and realized I missed my own Daddy. What used to be my Daddy, that is. Some of those labels, like "Disappointment" can be very misleading.

In the end, I still pray for the swift return of Christ.....for He will wipe EVERY tear from our eyes. There are still many more to cry....