Hope

After all the emails back and forth with my brother and sister and father last night, after the phone calls with my mother (who sounds as if she is counting on going right back to business as usual as soon as they release her from the hospital) and after a day of planning my trip to be with her this weekend, I was completely sapped.  That's not to mention the deal that had been sure thing until it fell apart during one astonishing phone call at work, or the "tough love" tack I tried to take when Liv threw a tantrum and that failed spectacularly until S. took over and triumphed with a "one-on-one attention" approach.

I felt like I sucked, that everything sucked, and that it was all hopeless.  My mother would never change.  She would keep degenerating, becoming more and more of a burden until she died before my children's seventh birthday.  What was the use of any of it in the end?

Before I was a Christian, I would get on this hopeless track and ride it around and around until my mind eventually went to the emergency exit.  "You could always just check out," it whispered.   "Yes," I would whisper back.  "There's always that."  I never went so far as to plan my death.  As a young person who didn't believe in anything, I simply considered it the logical last resort. 

Last night I could feel myself getting onto the little hopeless track I haven't been on in years, when suddenly a switch flipped and I was on a scripture track.   Instead of "You could just check out," it whispered promises.

I can redeem the years the locust has eaten.  I can wash her transgressions whiter than snow.  I am doing a new thing. All things work together for good.

A tiny fissure of light opened up.  S. came back from putting the kids down and told me about a time when God used his weakness and his mother's to redeem them both from their addictions.  I was overwhelmed with gratitude for him, and so drained I could barely spread peanut butter on bread for the kids' sandwiches.

S. put me to bed and tucked me in.  I woke up this morning renewed and full of hope.