Left to Myself

As I sit in the hospital with two very sick and very needy toddlers, my mind does not wander. I do not mentally review my planner. I do not fidget because I have "other things to do". I was going to write this post anyway, weeks ago, not knowing yet that I would have two babies in the hospital at the same time. The hospital situation just helped to bring into sharp focus the theme of my subject.

If left to myself, I would be one hot mess right now...

But I was not, so I am not.

This season though, sitting in the hospital, running from room to room is the perfect pressure cooker to help my knowing of redemption reach my buried self and breathe new life into my soul.

This little one sleeps. I am too wired on coffee to rest. He is still too critical for me to run to the other end of the hospital to check on the other. My own mother sits with my Sollie. He is being loved well. I know this because I know that I am loved well. I know what love looks like. I live abundantly in love. A luxury in this world.

This building is at an all time high for admissions right now. This place is packed full of sick children and their soul weary mammas and papas. If only souls could be fixed by attaching tubes and oxygen and medicine through our veins.

What we are suffering from cannot be fixed by this science. Sorrow and soul sickness can only be healed by Him. We hold the same parameters as our children in this regard. This place can provide the environment and the tools, but only He can piece us back together, bring us forth from nothing, just like he did before we were made the first time.

Places like this, where people cry in hallways and where I stop to ask a young woman if she is all right, head in her hands, defeated; places like this can fix us, if we just seek and ask. This place can also smother us to death, if we let it happen. If we don't fight off the dark with our claws out, it will consume us. The default of our human nature is always passivity. If we do not actively seek our joy, grief will swallow us up. Here, in these thick walls, this reality is visible and I can feel it creep in like an infection.

We are not so much body healed here by the (awesome) doctors and nurses, but mended in a different way, a better way. We are restored by The Physician that trusted us with these young souls in the first place. Our bodies here, as parents, actually take quite the beating. We go without sleep or food. We wring our hands and grind our teeth. We are worn raw by fatigue, worry, and plain seeping sadness. Our bodies are not what can get fixed here, our souls are what need sewn together and they can be, by the very things that are meant to weaken us. We can be pieced back together by the very things that are meant to ruin our souls and turn our eyes to grief. We can be renewed just as He was by the very things that are meant to kill us. We are held together when we sow ourselves spent. These hard things that need to be done when love gives us no choice and backs us in a corner are the fast track to holiness.

We are left with nothing but faith because we are too tired to be left to ourselves.

There is no time to look in the mirror, or linger in the shower, whenever we get a shower at all. No time to worry about our clothes or hair or lists.

If I were left to myself, my life would be great in the eyes of every person who doesn't understand why we do this. Left to myself would not be dropping our plans of vacation and sitting with sick children. When I was here, if I was forced to do so, by guilt or expectation of others, I would be eager to leave. Always looking for something else to do and somewhere else to be. Make no mistake, I cannot wait to get out of here. I miss terribly my husband and children at home. I am comforted though exponentially that Our Jesus Himself has sent people and a Church into my life to pour into my family in my absence. I would have never literally trusted Jesus to take care of my family until I had no choice. If left to myself, I would micro manage and lean into my own knowledge and strength. Here, it would not have lasted very long.

There is no human, born or acquired, strength that could even merely sustain you when you are holding a child who gasps for breath. There is no amount of caffeine or mental fortitude that can hold you up when one is gasping and another is drowning in their own fluids.

There is none.

There is something that other people miss when they speed by and dismiss a sacrificial life. I can always see the desperation in their faces, hear it in their voices or read it in their words. They do not have peace. For them truly, I pray daily that their eyes will be opened and their hearts will be broken. If their hearts are whole and eyes wide open while looking past the suffering of others, then their hearts and vision are not their own. They belong to the world, a place of the most torrential suffering with no hope of redemption. These people can live with their hearts and eyes made silent and blind by things and lists and possessions. It will not last. It is not real. The ache of knowing it is what I have said is still there. A sad place indeed.

The blessing of a certain peace that comes when you are where you are supposed to be is invaluable and something that would have been utterly impossible if I did not live this life of mine, of His. Without my carpenter Christ, my Christ who is always ready to build me up, I would be trapped by my own hollow coping mechanisms in order to build the lie of security in this world. Hollow human made security does not hold back the dark in a place like this.

I see feeble security collapse with sharp screams and waves of sobbing in this place. The most tragic desecration comes from those with the most world security and the least Jesus security. It is a soul killing combination that suffers the most violent death.

In this place, the fog of grief and worry are a permanent weight that you have to cut through in an intentional way. There has to be a light to follow in order to see one foot ahead of you. Otherwise, you would be lost. That light is here, even more here than in the most spectacular church. There is still laughter, from the child down the hall, head shiny from chemo, from my own little one, inching out the tiniest giggle in between wheezes and coughing spells. That light lives here, all the time, holding back the dark, letting us followers stay in a tight line, huddled behind Him, holding onto His promises, being warmed by his presence and led by His goodness.

I am so grateful that I am not left to myself. I'm rarely on time. I am wrong about things, often. I am grouchy. I am human. Myself is not enough.

These children, this life, make my former plans and ideas seem weightless, hollow and useless. That is the only kind of life you can really have if you are left to yourself. It's all you can have because ourselves don't support much weight and we give way with the very little pressing. I see it here often, mammas giving way as the torrent of grief and hopelessness drags them under. It is a tragic thing to witness. I cannot imagine succumbing to it and how terrifying it would be.

I pray again and again. Having sick kids keeps you in prayer almost constantly. My prayers are added to when I am here. I will not forget these hurting wandering people when we leave. I could not even if I wanted to. They are like ghost people who have been emptied out of all they thought was safe. I pray that they see Him in me. That they recognize him and reach out when I offer a lifeline. And when they say. "I don't know how you do it", I pray they feel and know that I am telling the truth when I say " I don't, I am weak and scared and tired. Can I pray for you?" I have myself to give even now, to let them see Him in me.

Because I am not left to myself, I have an infinite supply of strength and hope that flows through me. I waiver and I am human, but He always takes me hand and lifts me out of the water.

So thank God I'm not left to myself, Jesus is much better company.