Today Henry was crazy mad at me because I wouldn't let him play with his neighbors and cried, "You need to go somewhere far away like Japan so I can be with Dad!"
Son, you don't know how many times I wish I was far away somewhere like Japan.
It was a day for the books. Actually, no. It was a day not for the books at all, because no one needs to know what an angry wretch I can be. It was a day that I ask myself at 9am, Would Jesus care if I got flat-out wasted today? Then I tell myself the answer is yes and go to my room and read the Bible instead.
But we also had this fun little moment of imagination when Henry and I were playing trains. Henry brought Frostini (from Chuggington) over to my engines (from Thomas and Friends) and made this nice little introduction. Then he said he wanted to show us his land in the countryside, and we needed to follow him through the mystery tunnel from Sodor to Chuggington. (The mystery tunnel was under the recliner.) I could have cried right there.
Tonight he seemed to sense I was out of sorts and asked to go to bed early. We read several chapters of Magic Tree House, and then he pulled me to him, in the crook of his arm, and kissed me over and over.
God always knows what I need to soften my heart, to ease the bitterness and rage at what I perceive to be the unfairness of my life.
I recently finished reading Jennie Allen's Anything, and I've wrestled a lot with this thing that keeps cropping up in me (which I HATE), which is a sense of entitlement. Not entitlement to wealth or stuff, but entitlement to what I thought my life would be. I keep laying down this image of who I thought I was and what I thought motherhood and wifehood (is that a word?) would look like. I want this to be a done-deal, but it's not. I lay it down over and over and over again.
My anything is not "I'll sell my house, I'll adopt a kid, I'll move to Zimbabwe." That stuff would be a total cinch for me to do. If God called me to any of that, I would do it without blinking (after I convinced Keith). My true anything is what I'm doing right now.
Lord, I'm willing to do anything for your name's sake, even if it means continuing to work this job until the next one you have for me is ready. Even if it means I have to trust someone else to take care of him for a little while each Thursday. Even if it means figuring out how to love people I don't like. Even if it means laying down my pride. Even if it means shutting my stupid mouth. Even if it means saying I'm sorry when I don't want to. I give you everything. I am willing to do anything.
The hardest anything for me, you see, is the daily anything. The day-in-day-out struggle of laying my life down for Christ. The minutiae. The entitlement. The "I deserve." That's where I am right now.
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