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| How do you fight when darkness sweeps over your soul? With truth you know--even if it is truth you don't feel. |
Sometimes, persevering feels impossible.
October 22, 2015, was a night I could not sleep because the
darkness inside my own mind scared me.
The twins were four months old. My oldest son was four years
old. My daughter was two. Since the birth of the twins, I had not slept for
more than four interrupted hours per night. All those restless nights and the
roller coaster of hormones caught up with me. I was a spring so tightly wound I
couldn’t take a break, because that would mean getting behind in diapers, in
laundry, in dishes, in cleaning, in life. And yet not all the movement in the
world could manage to clean up the continuous shrapnel of life with newborn
twins and two young children. So I just got angry, first at my family, then at
my nannies, then at the unsuspecting waitress at Applebee’s. My husband finally
sat me down and wanted to know what was wrong. I wondered how he could think anything
was right. But October 22, he trusted me enough to go to bed. And what did I
do? Write.
I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and wrote in the
dark. Wrote of the lies that didn’t help. Wrote of the truth I knew was there
even if I didn’t feel it. Wrote until I had reminded myself of enough truth
that I could rest in that slim ray of hope. This is what I wrote:
This seems to be the year to have a baby. A number of
friends have enlarged their families this year. But while neighbors are busy
with introducing their third babies to the world, we alone got baby three and
baby four in one pregnancy. It’s efficient, noteworthy, exciting, exhausting—and
terrifying. I was not anxious about the thought of adding one more. When I
found out it was TWO more, I was terrified. Some days I still am afraid of what
may come as mommy walks alone through a long day after a restless night.
However, I know that I am not walking alone. As I told the ultrasound tech at
my clinic, God must have decided to stretch my character. More than that, He has
been strengthening my faith by taking me to a place over my head, fixing my
eyes on His sufficiency, and showing me how He gives grace one moment at a
time.
Faith testifies most
poignantly when under trial. Pregnancy
and life with twins has given unique opportunities to speak of God’s goodness.
While I was pregnant and apprehensive, nice people would try to calm my fears
by saying, “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” No one says that to
me anymore. God did give me more than I can handle. But this insufficiency to
meet life isn’t anything new. It was there before, because life is more than we
can handle. I can’t sustain my own heartbeat, let alone my child’s ability to
breathe. It’s just that as long as most of life goes according to our little
plans, we don’t feel our smallness.
The gift of life with twins is the experience of 2
Corinthians 12:9: “But he said to me, ‘My
grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power
of Christ may rest upon me.” Day after day, God has sustained us, sometimes
by giving us strength to keep on going when we were already spent, or sometimes
by providing help from our church or family. Either way, He always provides in a
manner that testifies to power at work outside us. There is no story here of
looking inside and finding strength. My inside is empty—the strength is His.
The outcome: a testimony to the world that God is powerful and good. What we
all need most isn’t another super mom, but an all-sufficient God.
Faith rises not to
the occasion, but to its object.
“You will rise to the occasion; you always do,” was another common remark
directed at me during this pregnancy. As someone with a history of stage
fright, I’ve risen to the occasion of delivering a speech and performing at a
recital. That’s an occasion. Motherhood is a marathon—one that you run anew
everyday with little sleep and spectators who scream for bottles and fight over
the color of their spoons. You run out of occasions fast around here, but faith
looks up above the hurdles. “You keep him
in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you. Trust in
the LORD forever, for the LORD GOD is an everlasting rock”
(Isaiah 26:3-4, emphasis added). Or as the psalmist writes, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where
does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth”
(Psalm 121:1-2).
My faith is in God, not in myself. My faith is in the
sovereign God who created all things—even twins—and who sustains all
things—even exhausted mothers—by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3). He is at
work for our good, and will sustain our hands and hearts to hold every good
thing He puts into our lives. He never tires, He never sleeps, and He carries
His own as a tender shepherd carries lambs. He knows the minds of preschoolers
and the illnesses of infants. He is gentle with the lowly and a mighty warrior
who fights for His people. He never leaves us, and is faithful to answer every
cry. He abounds. He is rich in lovingkindness, slow to anger, and merciful to
remember that we are dust. This is our God. This is where my eyes are to be
fixed. This is what will sustain me through the next day, night, hour, minute.
Faith trusts in God
for moment by moment deliverance. It is so easy for fear to creep in. First
comes a bad night—everyone waking up all the time. Then a hard morning. Then an
afternoon when children don’t nap at the same time. Soon apprehension about the
coming night grips your heart until despair begins to drain you of the any energy
or enthusiasm you had to care for your children. Sleep becomes the idol, until
you realize that God is still king, and knows what you need.
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will
eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not
life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the
air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly
Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by
being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? [....] Therefore do
not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Matthew 6:25-27, 31)
Each day has its own trouble, its own need and its own
provision. God will meet that need when it comes, and sustain you through the
moment when it arrives, just as He has this moment. Corrie Ten Boom’s father
explained it to her this way:
“Corrie,” he began gently, “when you
and I go to Amsterdam—when do I give you your ticket?”
I sniffed a few times, considering
this.
“Why just before we get on the
train.”
“Exactly. And our wise Father in
heaven knows when we’re going to need things, too. Don’t run out ahead of Him,
Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look
into your heart and find the strength you need—just in time.” (Ten Boom, Corrie.
The Hiding Place. NY, NY: Bantam
Books, 1974. P. 29.)
“Just in time.” You will have the strength you need just in
time.
I saved the document at 2:37 a.m. on October 23, and went to
bed. The fight wasn’t over, but the battle for that moment was won. There would
be more battles, but also, mercifully, doctor appointments, gracious help,
medication, sleep, meals, hope, and even laughter. God faithfully carried our
family through that first night of postpartum depression, and He would continue
to do so during the next twenty months without fail, and shaping my life in
ways I could not have imagined. But that would all be in future moments. On
October 23, He gave truth and rest for October 23, and that was just enough
grace to persevere for one more night.
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