While I still believe that to be true, I feel less focused on it and more like someone has thrown me into the ocean with no life jacket.  Everywhere I look, I only see uncertainty and fear and failure and weariness.  There’s nothing or no one in sight who can pull me to safety.  This line from the Casting Crowns song, Oh My Soul, has become my headline, “And my shipwrecked faith will never get me to shore.  Can He find me here?  Can He keep me from going under?”  When I focus on the uncertainty of the future, or the scariness of a life without Henry, or my failures as a mother and a Christian, or the weariness of carrying this grief with me for the rest of my life – I’m faced with a pretty hopeless future. I see pictures from just one year ago, and though they are filled with happy memories, I almost hate seeing them.  It’s like watching that scene of the Third Class party in the movie Titanic.  It’s difficult to enjoy their happiness because you know the fate that is coming to all of them in just a few hours.  I want to scream at the year old pictures of myself and tell that girl how stupid and naive she is.  I want to warn her to get her priorities in order.   I want to tell her to shed her judgment, pride and self-righteousness.  But mostly, I want to forget that she ever existed.

Then, when I compare the current me to the me one year-ago, I come to a new perspective on my life and all I can see is God’s provision through every moment.  If you would’ve told me a year ago that in just a few short months I would face the most devastating loss of my life and that it would be immediately followed by more (less devastating, but significant) loss and by the betrayal of friends and the sabotage of enemies, I would’ve told you that there’s no way I could survive that.  I would’ve told you that my marriage would certainly end and that even though suicide may not have been the end result, it would have definitely been considered.  I would’ve told you that my life would resemble something from a zombie movie and that I would likely abandon my faith.

Instead, the opposite has happened.  My marriage and family are stronger than ever before.  I occasionally catch glimpses of a future that is filled with love and hope, service and joy.  My faith is there and whether it feels strong and bold, or weak and weary, it is the sole lifeline to which I cling.  I don’t know why God so often reaches and calls the broken. I can’t identify the reasons why this gauntlet has been thrown in front of us.  I will never understand how my broken heart has more capacity to love than my “whole” heart ever did before.  My only explanation is that God has equipped us at every step along the journey.  He has been preparing us our whole lives. He is with us in our deepest pain and He equips us to walk through every valley in our path.

Psalm 37:4 states, “Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart.”  I would like to claim that the desires of my heart are purely that God be glorified in all I say and do and that every soul on earth be drawn to Him.  If I can step back and view this with an eternal perspective and see this world and this life with their inherent temporary and fragile nature, I can say that this is the desire of my heart.

But when the focus on “here and now” creeps in, like it threatens to do in every moment, my desires are different.  I long for a time of comfort, peace, quiet, rest and beauty with no pain or suffering. I guess I want to reach the shore and just sit there for a while.  I want things to be easy.   I’m just not convinced that this is what God has in store for our lives . . . at least this side of Heaven.

So my prayer becomes this – “Lord, please mold the desires of my heart to be like Yours.  Please give me rest when I am weary and hope when I am hopeless.  Thank You for walking with us and providing for our needs even before we recognize them.  I believe, help my unbelief.”