Believing

We are snowed in up here in the San Bernardino mountains.  People are going a bit crazy with the inconvenience.  But if you don't have anywhere to go and a cozy chair to sit in and you can shut out the frantic people on social media, it's the best thing ever.

It's December 28 of this hard, spiritually dark year.  It's almost over, and yet if I know anything, it's that dates are arbitrary as much as we want to imbue them with meaning.

Ben died a year ago today.  Ben's death ripped open so many of us and though none of us have talked about it, we've silently never recovered, and the wound is still gaping.

His death left this jagged question mark etched on all of life, and colored my whole year in darkness.

So heavy this cloud, I've numbly stumbled through all the other hard things that happened to us this year, not really able to process any of it.

I used to push through and see the good and hopeful in all of it.  Now I just feel overwhelmed, waves crashing one after the next with only the time to gasp for one lung-full of air between to bear the one coming. I don't know where I have gone, that faith-filled perseverer who bore so much.  I think she got worn down (worn away?) from the sandpaper adversity.

So "normally" a new year brings visions and ideas and promise.  I don't know how to approach the future anymore with that kind of optimism.  I see God's promised deliverance ahead, and a whole lotta trouble until then.  And I'm trying to convince myself I can bear what's coming.

I worked myself up into an anxiety attack last night with worries about the weather's effect on our environment (the huge chunk of the 18 falling off due to the rain, for example) and the unknown impact of the snow/moisture on our old house, which was already a source of great worry.  As I said good night to Vianne last night, she pointed out some cracks that have appeared on her walls.  I just now noticed a corner of the downstairs bathroom floor that looks like it's got some moisture issues.  The comments from the doomsday contractor who pointed out every single issue of our house have never left my brain and they are always there, whispering to me that we made a terrible decision and are now trapped in a money pit.  It's like hands squeezing tight against my esophagus and my soul, left to its own devices, is terrified. I'm terrified what is going to happen (structurally) to this house, what it might do to us physically, emotionally, and financially.

I haven't written here in weeks (obviously).  Life has not been busy so much as I've been trying to be very deliberate about choices with my time, rejecting the frantic and choosing the intentional.  Even if that's giving myself a lot of time to create.  I made a peppermint throw blanket, which probably took at least 60 hours when all was said and done, simply because I wanted to...and something of a middle finger to all the demands society would love to burden me with.  I was in a good rhythm of getting in walks by the lake every morning until the 30 degree weather hit, and it gave me some time to process what I want moving forward, as much as I feel completely in the dark about what God desires of me.

The dark night journey continues.  I often wonder if persisting in belief when I feel none of it and have so many questions may be the deepest expression of faith.  It doesn't feel like anything respectable, though.  It just feels like a big "I guess we'll see." Is that enough?

I'm listening to Dave Gustavsen preach on God's promises and our submission even as I type.  He's helped me through this year, when very few have been able to give me words I could believe.

"Ordinary girl," he says of Mary, "completely chosen by God's grace, scared to death about the whole thing, and yet she chose to submit, and the world has never been the same."

I don't think God is asking me to birth a Savior, heh.  I do believe he's asking me to trust even as I stand in the rubble, even as I imagine impossible and terrifying situations that could very likely befall us.  I don't have to handle them perfectly, this is the thing.  I just have to survive them, really.  I wonder if I can do that.  I wonder if I can just take the next step (toward the light, as it were), and maybe even  without the histrionics of imagining all the potential horror.

I'm not gonna lie, joy in any of it seems like a too far a stretch right now.  Continuing on without self-destructing seems like the goal.  God, that's depressing.  It's what I've got.  Can I submit to the possibility that his imagination for the future is greater than my limited one?  Can I submit to the reality of hope that I cannot feel in any way?

I miss the way faith used to come, with unabashed hope, and without so much reservation.  But to whom else would I go?  I have only now to persist, to see what happens.  The promise is that it is glorious.  Can I, will I believe it?