my husband, the sitting duck target

Below is an email I sent to a group of my friends, in response to one I sent them earlier this week about praying for me and how pissed I was at God/life/circumstances. It's pretty self-explantory. All I can say this morning is that I'm immensely thankful to have a God who loves to rescue me and who constantly is pouring his ocean of love over me...despite me believing that or not at the moment.

It makes me think of how I rush to pick up Brighton off the doctor's table after getting his vaccination shots and long to smother him in kisses. I hate for him that he lives in this sick world where he needs to get immunizations and he doesn't understand why. That I have to let him get stuck with needles and go through that pain while he looks at me frantic as if to say "Why are you letting them do this to me?!" How I ache to snatch him away from the doctor, but have to let him do his thing for Brighton's well-being in the long run. How I spend the whole rest of the day just holding him and loving on him as he cries and deals with the sick feeling of having immunizations running rampant through his little body. How I wish he knew how madly in love with him I was and that I'm not just his farm to get food & comfort from. And I'm just a limited human with one smidgen of love to offer compared to the ocean Christ has for us. How much more is his love for us his children?? How much more does his heart break for us that we live in this fallen state??

If you care to read on, here's the story and thoughts I shared with my friends this morning...

" 'With my sin here before me, how can this be, You say I am lovely? Even in my weakness, You love me. Even in my weakness, you say I am lovely. What is this Love, that washes me, taking away my shame...'

Above are lines from a song I listened to on the way to work this morning, that always send chills down my spine or tears to my eyes. I think I reached an all time low this morning, but thankfully, Christ never fails to scoop me up in those moments.

After a long hard night with Brighton, Matthew tried to be tender and sweet towards me this morning. Being the wonderful wife I am, what did I do? I pushed him...or rather beat him...away with my anger.

Rule #1: when your husband moves towards you in love ESPECIALLY when you're going through hell together, don't stab him in the back...or much less the heart...with words of hatred.

Hmmm, sometimes I feel like the stereotypical male in our marriage, more than the tender wife :0)

Anyhow, that instance was yet another wakeup call to me that I'm pretty burnt out and have GOT to be totally dependant on Christ. In the sense that I cannot be waiting for circumstances to improve - more sleep, less work, more time with Matthew. I have GOT to be soaking in Christ's love as much as feasibly possible right now. I don't have the luxury of being sane, therefore I need the truth of Christ's beauty and astonishing love to seep into me. I feel like a dried up tea bag that needs the boiling water of Christ. For me, that happens through music.

So on the way to work, I turned on these songs that are TRUTH and just let myself soak. Your prayers are being answered. Christ is giving me moments of hope and sanity. I know those moments won't stick around forever, but this morning, it all makes sense.

Life is hard, that will never change. My marriage will go through valleys as well as mountaintop peaks. I will never be the Holy Spirit for Brighton and be able to save him from hard things in life. I will feel cruddy and have miserable days or weeks or years emotionally and/or physically. BUT I am not currently Home(heaven)...I'm heading there. Therefore this isn't where I get to curl up on the couch and hunker down for a life of rest and relaxation. While there will be moments of rest, most of this life will be hunkering down in a trench and dodging grendades or being hit with shrapnel every now and then. BUT that's not the whole story either. While living in this fallen world does mean being at war in one sense until we get to go Home, we get the greatest gift of all in the midst of this chaos. Christ. Who we already know, and can be assured of, that He won this war. And He's so wildly in love with me, even when I'm bloody and wimpering and fuming with anger in a dirty trench, that He fights this war FOR me. I just have to let myself be scooped up and hidden in His arms as we head into the battle of life together.

Why does that make so much sense some days and other days I feel totally alone and abandoned? Why do I constantly relate my "cursed-earth"ly circumstances and blaim God for not taking care of me?

Because I forget the Truth more often than I'd like to admit. That I live in a fallen world, in a fallen body and I will ALWAYS feel the effects of that...even when circumstances are better. But my ONLY TRUE REST will ever be found in remembering I am wildly, passionately loved and pursue by this God who is ALWAYS worthy of my praise. His worthiness has absolutely NOTHING to do with the effects of the fall on my life. I wish I got that all the time, but I'll take "getting it" this morning and ask for prayers when I forget it again :0)

Thank you Christ for pursuing us daughters like the "Hound of Heaven". Thank you for holding us tightly and kissing our tangled hair in the midst of our tantrums. Thank you for offering us partnership and friendship with each other so we can ralley around each other in prayers & support when we forget the TRUTH of the Story.

And thank you ladies, for your partnership in prayer and for all your encouraging emails and phone calls. I am so honored to have such tender, yet powerful women in my life who can both love me and challenge me.

In His ocean of love,
Amy"