I had my last women's Bible Study this morning at church; the final meeting of a ten-week study in Nehemiah. I got about two-thirds of the lesson done this week; better than some weeks, not as good as other weeks, but I probably missed a few key verses at the end and I definitely missed out on the "mediate on these truths" section.
Yet I went every week, even when all the blanks remained blank, because I am trusting God that going is better than not, that I'm hearing his Word and having some of the benefits of study rubbing off on me from the other ladies at the table.
So much of this phase of life feels like walking in faith. Faith that going to church every Sunday is "worth it," even when one parent is in the foyer with a busy, too-snotty-nosed kids for the nursery, and the other is downstairs with an eating or sleeping babe.
Faith that my marriage is going to be okay despite the stresses that I feel childbearing and childrearing is having on it.
Faith that God will watch over my kids and lead them to himself.
Faith that when I lay my kids down at night, they will wake up in the morning. And faith that even if they don't, everything will be okay.
You consider these possibilities like never before when your heart is bound up in others like never before. Your body and your soul are taking a beating, and this erodes away at your faith in yourself (a good thing but unsettling nonetheless).
And so you take a second look at faith and realize that you need someone to "lead me to the rock that is higher than I." Faith leads me there, and a hand stronger than mine keeps me there. There's so much lack of visible evidence right now that my efforts are worth it, but faith is "conviction of things not seen." I know that my Redeemer lives, and "he who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?"
Oh ye of little faith: "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" (Matthew 7:11)
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I hear you. Oh, how I hear you. God has rooted me to a spot that marvels, "If I could see the ending, I would choose this, too." Sometimes I handle it better than others, sometimes I just weep for our world and people, but still I stand there. Rooted.
This is so true for us with grown kids "faith that God loves and cares for them when I can't" and "faith that God sees my heart and my work when no one else does." "For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love that you have showen for his name in serving the saints." Hebrews 6:10.
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