There is Grief in the Journey

I have kinda had a day. Actually, I've kinda had a lot of days. The last two years have been anything but a picnic. They've been more like a marathon that never, ever ends. You conquer one hurdle and you haven't even brought the second leg down when the next hurdle is right there. (ok. I know that marathons don't have hurdles...unless there is some sadistic race out there, but bear with my poor analogy!) So you keep going faster and faster until the hurdles get so close that you can't possibly jump them fast enough and you...fall.

That's kinda where I am. I know that some of this is a direct result of the drugs they gave me yesterday during the heart cath, and some of it is just...fatigue. Not the physical fatigue of having worked hard, but the emotional fatigue that says, "Again???"

At church on Sunday, someone asked me how my kids were handling all of my recent heart issues. I looked at them and said, "Their brother had brain surgery. To them, you go to the hospital and have surgery, then you come home and recover..." It made me realize the extent to which our family has been challenged...and the fact that you have to just keep putting one foot in front of the other because what's the alternative?

And then there was today...the day after my heart cath and ... we are all kinda done. The kids are spending a fair amount of time away from their parents because Billy is at work (they essentially see him on the weekends) and I am busy shuttling the boys to doctor appointments...(What we would do without Randy and Erlene stepping in is beyond me! They are physically holding us together!) and now I am being hauled off to the hospital, going to doctor appointments, and having lots of tests. Oh, and heart surgery. The children woke up, telling one another what to do and how to do it all while ignoring their own responsibilities. And then there were the missed expectations of what I could do today...or better yet, what I couldn't do, both mentally and physically and their lack of desire to understand.

So, the kids who need structure lack structure. The younger children lack discipline. No one is getting parental face time. And everyone is unhappy. There is NO joy in Mudville.

And I don't know how to help because right now, there's no joy in my own heart...just a vast sense of...grief. It isn't that I don't understand God's sovereignty or the fact that He is most definitely at work in our family, it's just the feeling that says, "Lord, it's been raining for forty days and forty nights! Is it going to end? and will my children love one another when it does?" I know God has a plan, but Monday morning is just so hard. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!