A couple of weeks ago, after a particularly frustrating afternoon that was marked by feelings of inadequacy and failure, I was able to escape outside for a quick walk. My usual walk routine is to listen to a podcast while I circle around our neighborhood, but on that particular day, I felt so emotionally discombobulated that I started the walk in silence. On the surface, the source of my frustration seemed clear: my own tiredness, two rambunctious four year olds that struggled to listen and the daily OCD behaviors of my special needs son that came to a boiling point all highlighted my own impatience and left me feeling like I had no control over anything. I felt like a failure.
As I walked and shared my heart with God, other situations in my life where I felt inadequate and a lack of control also started to bubble up. I realized that some of my feelings were bigger than the issues of the moment dictated. And while it took a quiet adoration hour the next morning to pray and journal in order to get to the root of where feeling like a failure ultimately came from, talking to God on that walk kept my hurting heart open. And He had a little something to say to me, even though He didn't take away all the hard feelings as I walked my usual loop.
After I had spilled out everything to God and kept walking in silence trying to take in the beauty of the spring world around me in an effort to calm my nervous system, I had a thought that I'm pretty sure came from Him:
"I need to let God love them through me."
As I pondered what that meant, I realized that when I start to feel inadequate and like a failure as I try to care for the people that I love, I begin to feel like everything depends on me. That I'm the one who needs to fill them and fix them. (Which is a lie and totally impossible and just makes me feel more inadequate and more like a failure...and perpetuates a negative thinking spiral.)
The reality is that I'm not enough for anyone and I'm certainly not enough for everyone in my life at every given moment! That's God's job, and I can certainly never be successful at that!
Maybe you can relate to the struggle with self sufficiency? It's so easy to get caught up relying on our own strength. The desires behind it are often well meaning. We want our family to feel loved and cared for, and that's a good thing. But if we try to love them and care for them in our own strength, that runs out pretty quickly. Then we are left completely depleted and looking at all the ways that we are falling short.
There's always so much that I want to give to my husband, children and grandchildren. As mothers, so much of the giving that we do is in the shadows. There are so many ways that we pour into our family that they never even see. We want them to know that they are thought of and loved so often in our minds and hearts. All the planning and the prepping for holidays, birthdays, and milestone celebrations. All the times that we see something that reminds us of them. We want our love to fill their hearts.
Yet, there are moments when all that we do never feels like "enough". And then there are those times where we lose our patience and say things we wish we hadn't that seem to speak louder than all the love we try to pour into them. Discouragement can slip in and make us feel hopeless - like we are trying to fill up an ocean with a cracked plastic pail.
But like I learned on my walk, "enough" isn't supposed to come from me. It's supposed to come from God through me.
Another Parent Who Tried to Be "Enough"
There's a parent in the Bible who tries to be "enough" for his daughter. Jairus was one of the rulers of the synagogue who was searching for Jesus to beg him to come and save his dying daughter. Jairus does find him and Jesus agrees to come with him. Jairus must have felt such relief, but also a sense of extreme urgency to get Jesus to his daughter before it was too late.
But then there's a shift in the focus of the story. Jesus stops to minister to the hemorrhaging women. I was thinking about how Jairus might have felt during Jesus' miracle and interaction. Jairus was carrying such a heavy emotional burden. It must have been so incredibly hard to stop for any amount of time with the worry that he carried about his daughter. Even though Jairus had sought out Jesus, maybe Jairus felt that it was all up to him to get Jesus to his daughter in order for his actions to be enough and save her.
In the midst of this interruption, Jairus' worst fears came true. People from Jairus' house arrive and tell him his daughter has died. Grief must have permeated Jairus along with the sense that he had failed his daughter by not getting Jesus to her in time. But we all know that's not the end of the story.(see Mark 5: 21-24,35-43) Because Jesus' abilities go far beyond our limited human strength.
This little girl's healing came from Jesus through Jairus' efforts to love and care for his daughter. Because it came from Jesus, it was more than enough. Her healing transcended interruptions, hopelessness and even death.
And this gives us hope as parents. God, not Google, needs to be our first stop when our kids are facing physical, emotional or spiritual situations that seem impossible for us to fix. We need to remember that whenever our best efforts fall short, that is exactly where God is waiting and where His power shines the brightest. We need to remember that we do not fight for our children on our own...and that's something that I need God to remind me of over and over again!
"The Lord will fight for you; you have only to keep still."(Exodus 14:14)
 |
