Milestones in water

I keep looking for the evidence that I'm making progress, that I am healing. Yesterday I asked for a change of topic as it was taking me into a place of mental and emotional distress that I didn't want. But as I went over it later, I was able to see that I am stronger than I was. I do have more days of feeling "even" rather than "down". Or maybe I'm seeing the "down" as the "even" now?

But when will I be able to hear about how well my daughter's older sister is doing in care, now that she isn't in my home anymore? When will it not hurt any more? When will I feel less like my life was stolen from me - the life that I wanted and was working for. Is it time that I moved on? No one has said this to me (and I know that this is a line many women hear at some point after the death of a spouse). At least not yet. I am grateful for that, because I don't think I could be gracious in response.

I am finding my way. But it feels slow and meandering, not efficient and straightforward. That frustrates me. I am looking for the milestones, like child development, so I can tick those boxes and see that I will eventually find my new life and feel less traumatized by everything that has happened to me.

I had a mental picture on Sunday as I was sitting in church: a piece of celery and a hard, dry, cracked ground. Both are dry and need water. Celery tastes good when it's crunchy and snaps in your mouth. If it is limp and floppy, it is nothing but rubbery strings. It is the water that makes it palatable. And it is possible to revive it by cutting off the end and soaking it in water until it is firm again.

Ground without rain becomes dry, but ground that is washed away, walked over and packed down will crack apart and become very hard. It takes a lot of rain to move it from slick and hard to moist and pliable and for those cracks to fill in. For the ground to break up, it needs more than just water. It also needs to be worked wih tools to make it more what it is supposed to be.

My back garden is like this. All the nice soil was stripped when the house was built, and the beds are like rock during the summer months. I can only pull the weeds out after a rain when the soil is wet. Quickly it returns to being hard, and after a few days of dry weather, it cracks apart. It probably needs regular topping up with good soil every year, but I have only compensated this year by covering it with mulch to try and hold the moisture in.

Water of life. It's essential to keeping us firm, pliable and usable for the purpose God made us.

God measures milestones differently than we do. He doesn't use time as a measure, nor achievements. He knows that we don't learn things once and then get it. We sometimes need to go over it again and again.

We need just the right amount of water too. Too much and we are swimming, or drowning. There are plenty of passages about God protecting from the waters and plenty of times He held the water back in judgement (the drought in the time of Elijah as a judgement on Ahab) and in provision (crossing the Red Sea and the Jordan River).

But milestones of grief have been different than any other. I have seen the shift from those first months of intense bewildering pain. Now I have cried a lot of that out, it is more of a numbing ache that never goes away. The bed is empty, the house is quiet, I can't step back and let him take over - because he isn't here.

And she is gone too. All the energy and effort I expended was for nothing. It didn't help her to overcome or to settle. She wouldn't give up the fight, and is happy for it. She is working the system to her advantage, accumulating "stuff" to her heart's delight and contented in the life she is building where she is. But she has left in her wake such a path of devastation in my heart. Her sister, too, is better off, but I look nervously at her to see if she, too, will turn on me.

I know that I mustn't take this personally. Everyone knows that it's not specifically to do with me, but what I represent. That doesn't make it any easier that I poured everything out and got nothing back except loss, emptiness and hurt. Maybe that is what parenthood is all about, but I question that. I see many of my friends and family members who are parents get tremendous joy out of their parenting efforts. Perhaps that is the reserve for those who were blessed with birth children?

In this area, I need water to cleanse out the debris left behind and wash it away. I need the Lord to soften the hard anger and broken hurt to make everything pliable again so He can work with it.

I also need the water to flow into me and make me firm and crisp, not floppy and unusuable.

A friend told me that I shouldn't expect to be involved in ministry for at least 3 years after the death of my husband. I am slowly realizing that I am now mourning the death of a family I had worked so very hard to build. It seems to take me forever to accept that it has never come together the way I wanted, despite all my efforts.

Psalm 127:1 Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain.

I do not believe that I adopted two girls outside of the will of God. It was never my idea to adopt at all. It was His. I moved slowly, waiting for my husband to come on board. When he did, he was more enthusiastic than I was. I was nervous and scared, perhaps rightly so. God knows I prayed frequently for my Isaac not my Ishmael. I was determined that I would not step out of His will.

The washing of the water of the Word comes, and sweeps away the fear and doubt. God speaks simply to my heart. He gives peace and He takes away the muddled thoughts that the enemy can activate.

Just because she left my home, does not mean that I was not meant to parent her for that time. I gave her a tremendous gift. I loved her and worked to support her in every way. She has never had and never will have again such a care in her life. Perhaps she will never acknowledge it, but without it, she would have had next to no chance at freedom from her past. Her foster parents and her adoptive parents were the place of healing, when she is able to realize it. And perhaps she never will.

As the water of the Word rushes in, the milestones float to the surface and I see them. I have grieved. I have mourned. I have poured myself out. I have surrendered. And I have moved forward. What more could I ask of myself? What more is there to ask?