Love... Is Not Shaken

Apparently, while I was busy polishing up my last post, my grandma fell in their kitchen. She is mostly okay, although rather sore. In the aftermath, she has decided it's time to take a break from exercise class for the rest of the winter. As grandma told me, it isn't easy getting old.

While all their children are pitching in to help with meals, laundry, and appointments, her constant on-site caregiver is my grandpa. From helping her get her socks on to swapping recliners so she can rest more comfortably to cooking her oatmeal for breakfast, his mission is to take care of her. He does everything he can, without complaining about any of it.

My grandparents have had a good many Valentine's Days together, and I'm sure some of them included going out for dinner or attending a show. Not this year. This year they will be home, but they will be home together. In the end, it's being together that counts the most. What romance looks like will change over the course of a long marriage as bodies change and grow old. Hopefully what will remain is our love for the person God has provided in His wisdom and goodness to romance our days on earth. Even when our hands and legs shake with age, may our hearts remain steadfast.

____________________________

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me prov'd,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

--William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

Philippa Gordon Was Right: The Real Romance of Life

"I suppose you've gone and refused Gilbert Blythe. You are an idiot, Anne Shirley!"

"Do you call it idiotic to refuse to marry a man I don't love?" Anne said coldly, goaded to reply.

"You don't know love when you see it. You've tricked something out with your imagination that you think is love, and you expect the real thing to look like that...."

—Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of the Island, Chapter 20

_____________________________________

Valentine’s Day is Friday and appeals to our love of romance are everywhere. But have you ever noticed almost every romantic story ends at the wedding? Shakespeare, Jane Austen, even modern-day romantic comedies—they all reach the end right as the couple are pronounced man and wife. It’s as if nothing after the wedding is worth seeing. Romance is clearly something for the pre-marriage days of pursuit. Consider the film rendering of the Love Comes Softly series by Janette Oke. Unlike the books, in at least every other movie installment a husband dies, and so the audience has the thrill of a new romance unfolding to heal the widow’s lonely heart. The more recent television series When Calls the Heart takes it a step further. Male interests end up getting arrested, killed, or written out of the script before romance transforms into formal commitment. Apparently it is more exciting to be single with a new infatuation than stuck in a steady covenant marriage.

As if it isn’t enough to indulge this itch for excitement in “make believe,” a whole market of reality television shows feed the desire for romantic pursuit. The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, etc., are heavy on fast-paced flirting, candlelight dinners, and kisses, and light on what happens after the starry-eyed couples actually have to wake up together day after day and live life off camera. What happens after the season is over? More often than not, the relationship falls apart.

I'm not opposed to match-making, blind dates, or romance. My own grandparents met on a blind date arranged by friends. Six short weeks later they were engaged. Six months after that, they were married. They will celebrate 73 years of marriage this June. While the story of those years does read with fairytale happiness, the practical details of how that happiness was lived out aren’t altogether magical. There was no carriage, no bicycle built for two. My grandparents took the bus on dates because that’s what they could afford. I’m not sure they went to any restaurants where violins played, but my grandpa did serenade my grandma with his ukulele and cowboy love songs. She still married him. The fact is, though, that we don’t hear much about their courtship.

When my grandparents tells stories, it’s about the time grandpa ended up cooking breakfast over the fire by himself in Yellowstone, handing plates of food to his sons, wife, and mother-in-law through the car windows because no one else would step out of the car and into the cloud of mosquitoes. There are retellings of the two times grandma clipped a door off their car while backing out of the garage with the car door open (yes, she did it twice). She then tried to hide the missing door by backing the car into the garage. I guess she thought grandpa wouldn’t notice the draft next time he drove to work. There are the stories about babies throwing pacifiers out of the car window on 35W; road trips to California with four kids in a car and no air conditioning; and the family dog who bit everyone. Vomit, sickness, and child injuries fill a genre all their own. But in all the reminiscing, what their four children remember most is grandpa and grandma dancing, just the two of them, around the kitchen after dinner, grandma humming a tune while they two-stepped or waltzed. Maybe the day had been hard and the work demanding. Maybe the kids were fighting or the dog had been a pain or the sink was filled with dishes. Still, they were in it together. They were together, and they were going to enjoy that fact and take a moment to dance. If that isn't true romantic love, I don't know what is. After all, love is...

patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

 This passage may be argued to refer to the general love we have toward everyone—and it does. Still, consider how much Paul’s admonitions to husbands mirrors this ordinary, daily, long-suffering love:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her [….]. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. (Ephesians 5:25, 28-30).

Love. Cherish. Nourish. Give yourself up—in loving service to another.

My grandparents can’t dance anymore. Life now is a complicated choreography of being together without crashing walkers. But if they could dance, they would. However, grandma still gets flowers and cards, and grandpa gets his cheeks pinched and kissed, just because he’s “so cute.” Just because.

This is the kind of love we should want. This is romance that endures sick kids and rough trips and sees love-offerings in homemade cards, clean laundry, or rice puddings made “especially for you.” It’s sticking together and building a life day after day, the romance of sure friendship, partnership, and sacrifice. It’s love that sees beauty in age, laugh lines in wrinkles, humor in deafness, and still kisses 73 years later just because.

When my husband came along, he wasn’t what I was looking for—tall, handsome, and quick with words. The tall, balding engineer who is eager to listen and slow to speak got the unintentional snub of “friend, but not my type.” When God was kind enough to hit me over the head and redirect my gaze back to the guy sitting across the Sunday school room, Matt made it clear his object was true love, not just the emotional rush candlelight dinners and goodnight kisses at the end of every date (or any date, for that matter). While emotional butterflies quavered a little at this radical redefinition romance, I kept going. Maybe it was because his personality reminded me of my grandpa: steady, quiet, calm, persistent. I’ve never been sorry for it. Each year life together gets sweeter; each year he grows more handsome. He never has learned to dance, but candlelight dinners abound. Our four children couldn’t imagine eating their corn dogs or spaghetti any other way.

My friends, the world is looking for love—in all the wrong places. Let’s not join their fruitless search. Let’s take a good look at our expectations and definitions and make sure we’re looking for the real thing. Anne Shirley’s chum Philippa Gordon got it right. Fortunately for the literary world, Gilbert Blythe persisted and Anne eventually got it right, too. Let’s not mislead our families and friends in this. By God's grace, let’s get romance right.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things. Love never ends.
1 Corinthians 13:7-8a

Snowbound or So Blessed? My Winter Heart-Check

Sometimes, we just feel stuck...

Every year as I shiver under a pile of blankets, my husband asks something like, “Wouldn’t you like to be on a beach right now?” “No,” I answer. While he was only teasing, he still accuses me of being masochistic. I point out the logistics of such a venture with four our kids, and we add more blankets to the pile. But this year I realized something: even if it were easy to manage, I still wouldn’t choose a yearly retreat each winter.

Why? Why choose to stay in winter? I suppose part of it has to do with how you view winter. Consider what God promised to Noah back when He painted the first rainbow across the sky:

“[T]he Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:21b-22, emphasis added)

Winter is part of a promise. It’s a season God created (Psalm 74:17), sustains, and sends as evidence of His faithfulness. Even so, how often do we dare to perceive it as such? Rainbows are beautiful reminders of God’s mercy. But snow?

Most of my life, winter didn’t come with a break. When it got colder, we put on more layers. When our 1920s radiators weren’t enough to fight the drafts, we put our dogs under the blankets with us. My parents may have desired a warm vacation, but Florida wasn’t in the budget. Instead, we went to the tropics exhibit at the zoo. Mostly, we came to understand that winter was a part of life. We all had fits of grumbling, but there it was. We couldn’t hibernate during it. We couldn’t fly away from it. Only one option remained: go through it.

We did. More than that, with my parents’ help, I learned to look for the unique blessings and rhythm of the season. For a kid in the inner city, winter had benefits. For a few months, a beautiful blanket of snow hid the crumbling asphalt. Abandoned parking lots became glittering fields for dog sled runs. There was quiet. No drug dealers or prostitutes roamed the sidewalks. There was peace. The earlier sunsets, cold temperatures, and snow were perfect excuses not to stay out late in the evening, but to enjoy more time at home and turn in early with a good book. Winter was like a freshly-washed sheet God used to tuck in a child over-wrought from all his warm-weather work and play. It was rest. Winter meant curling up in my armchair and sipping cocoa while listening to Tchaikovsky or piecing together jigsaw puzzles at the dining room table. It was a season of simple contentment.

That was my childhood. Now I share winter with four young children and the season sometimes involves more war than peace when a polar vortex keeps us inside day after day after day. Even now Lego structures, magnet tile mansions, and blanket forts fill the house. Somehow the kids avoid bouncing them down even while trampling the unsuspecting parent who dares to cross the racetrack to fetch food out of the fridge. There are beautiful days when the temperature rises above 15* and everyone bundles up in a complicated layering of snow pants, jackets, boots, hats, and mittens. Once my polar explorers finally totter out the door, I might get a peaceful 20 minutes. If the snow is right for sculpting, I may get over an hour. But there are days when they stomp back inside after 15 minutes declaring it is too cold outside and start dumping gear all over the floor. That’s when it begins to feel there is no escape.

The question I must ask myself at this point is, “does there need to be an escape?” What about winter makes me deserve an escape? Maybe it is uncomfortable, but has God failed to supply us with what we need? Perhaps what needs to change isn’t my location or circumstance, but my attitude.

That’s the heart of the issue: attitude. I don’t have a problem with sunshine and warmth, and I strongly support going on family vacations. There are lots of good reasons to travel south during the winter and those who get the chance to should thank God for His good gift. Maybe someday we will travel south too, but not every year. Here’s why: when we build a yearly ritual into our calendar, we are constructing a habit.

Habits aren’t always bad, but they can feed attitudes. Consider if I get into a pattern of telling myself that when I feel stuck in a place that’s uncomfortable and inconvenient, it’s okay to get away from it. The circumstance doesn’t have to be winter. It could just be the ordinary grind of stay-at-home-mom life. I love my kids—but I also crave time away from them and their craziness. Anytime their grandparents offer to take them, the kids are available and I make my plans. While the break itself is innocent, that attitude of entitled escape can become an expectation in my own soul. Soon enough, I fixate on getting an escape and stop looking for God’s grace at work in and around me. Instead of trusting the Good Shepherd for His wise provision, I start looking for circumstances I think would be better pastures. But the fact of the matter is that His sovereign love has placed me here, at home with kids in winter. Consider Psalm 139:16b: “in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” Every one of them—even cold and crazy days. What if instead of looking for a way to escape, I said to my soul, “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24), and then looked for reasons to be glad in it?

The saying is “bloom where you’re planted.” In Minnesota, that includes blooming in winter. This season isn’t our enemy; it’s a season from God. God is still on the throne of heaven commanding an unchanging sequence of seasons because of His mercy toward His creation. He will not leave us in winter forever, just long enough to do us good. To everything there is a season, and the unwavering hope in every season is that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). As snowflakes fall, may we train our hearts to see the glory He is revealing to us instead of merely looking for something “greener.” May we find our contentment in His provision, our peace in His perfect plans for us, and our hope in knowing He who sends snow will also send spring.

Rest, Mama, Rest

What my child needs most isn't a Pinterest-perfect mom,
but a mom at rest.

Rest. How I long for rest, and yet it remains strangely elusive. Life right now is being a mom, wife, teacher, homemaker, housekeeper, cook, host, etc. While every one of these roles is a good gift, even a calling, it is rest I yearn for most. But if I dare to sit still, the world around me seems to collapse. How is a mom to sit at the feet of Jesus, like quiet Mary, and choose “the good portion” (Luke 10:42)? Jesus did say, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

Perhaps the question we need to think through is: what kind of rest is Jesus speaking about?

It was a beautiful day, and we were worn to a thread. We had started another year of homeschool and transitioned to a new church, all the while continuing to spend late nights and early mornings trying to encourage and help friends walking through various struggles and medical trials. Always, there was the unrelenting reality of laundry to wash, meals to cook, messes to clean up—and a vacation to prepare for. Did I mention daddy was on a business trip? It was normal life and we were weary of it. Still, we were going to visit friends. Packing up kids and changes of clothes and picnic lunches was getting old, but I knew the effort would be worth it. We were going to my friend’s house, and she was just the encouragement I needed.

As kids played in the yard, my friend and I sat atop a trampoline and got caught up. Stress melted away. Ideas flowed, direction and vision returned, and laughter came. We inspected tomatoes as well as the fallen tree in her yard, and then fed eight hungry kids at the extra-long picnic table on their deck. Sawdust and kids flew as her husband cut up branches and boys hauled it to the wood stack, and then together worked to erect a “new” playset they had acquired. Tired and dirty, we packed up and went home—fully rested.

How? My friend’s life is as chaotic if not more demanding than my own, filled with boys, homeschooling, hosting, ministry, working—and then almost all the trees in her yard deciding to fall down one after another, sometimes on top of things. Outwardly, her life is not a picture of Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus. Sitting is rare. It’s been years since I’ve seen her eat lunch (apparently that happens while she is working on her computer during afternoon naptime). How can she not only seem rested, but give rest?

Because inwardly, she is at rest.

She still has bad days and can become discouraged (she would be quick to tell you), but the prevailing truth I have heard her preach to her own heart is “the Lord will provide.” A heart at rest is a heart that is trusts in the sufficiency and work of God. It looks at life and remembers that what He calls me to do, He will enable me to do in His grace and through His provision. His provision may not be what I envisioned or come when I expected it to, but it will come and it will be good.

In Psalm 127, we are reminded,

“Unless the Lord builds the house,

those who build it labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city,

the watchman stays awake in vain.

It is in vain that you rise up early

and go late to rest,

eating the bread of anxious toil;

for he gives to his beloved sleep.” (Psalm 127:1-2)

The Lord does provide for our rest, but our actual sleep is an outward evidence of a deeper truth. John Piper puts it this way:

I think the main point of these […] verses is: "Don't eat the bread of anxious toil." It means just the same thing Jesus meant when he said, "Don't be anxious about what you shall eat." When we grow up we must all work for our bread. And we can either work nervously, worrying about what men will think of us—and so eat the bread of anxious toil. Or we can work with serenity in our hearts, as serving Christ and not men—and so eat the bread of peace. God's will for his children, indeed the sign of whether we are children or not, is that we not eat the bread of anxious toil. […]

The great test of faith is to believe that when we can see only a bleak outcome to some situation and no good coming of it, yet the sovereign God can and will bring out of nowhere, as it were, a turn of events or attitudes that brings great blessing. And he can do it while we sleep!
(from “Don’t Eat the Bread of Anxious Toil,” July 28, 1980)

The rest we need most, that brings true refreshment and allows us to rest physically, is a heart at rest—a heart that has found its peace in the perfect salvation and sovereign wisdom of Christ.

Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple; when I was brought low, he saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. Psalm 116:5-7

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

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. […] As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. John 15:5, 9

Mamas, our lives in this world will be work—but let’s fight to make sure that we work from a heart at rest in the work and provision of Christ. Let us not lead harried lives, restless, frustrated, and eating the bread of anxious toil as if the outcome depended solely on our diligence. Especially as we enter the holiday season and the temptation for worldly, Pinterest-perfect toil abounds, let us seek to rejoice in our Savior’s coming by resting in Him. May we have discernment to work at what matters most, not just what matters to our pride. For some of us (like me), this may mean having the humility to accept what is good—a home filled with creative children instead of a house that is photo-op ready. It may mean that during these busy years of young children, we buy gifts at Walmart instead of crafting them, skip sewing holiday dresses in favor of Goodwill bargain finds, and feast on pizza dished out on paper plates rather than ham served on China for Christmas Eve dinner. And that can all be good—especially if it means mama is at rest and available to enjoy what is most important. The Lord’s provision for me may not be for my life to look incredible by Facebook standards, but for my heart to learn to find satisfaction and joy in “God with us”—in every different season of life.

Mama, when the to-do list threatens to keep you awake, when you feel yourself unravel at the sight of what others can do, do not eat the bread of anxious toil. Look to the Lord. Surrender your expectations and pray for His provision. Trust His wise plan to sufficiently provide for each day, each moment, each task, the needed grace and strength to persevere in your calling. Work with hope. Work with heart as working for the Lord and not for man (Colossians 2:23-24).  And when you have done what you reasonably can, surrender that work and its outcome to His good pleasure—and rest in Him.

“Come, weary saints, though tired and weak

Hide away in the love of Jesus

Your strength will return by His quiet streams

Hide away in the love of Jesus

Come, wandering souls, and find your home
Hide away in the love of Jesus
He offers the rest that you yearn to know
Hide away in the love of Jesus”

—from “Hide Away In the Love of Jesus” by Steve and Vikki Cook

When Mommy Can't Run: Grace, Faith, and the Postpartum Fight for Joy

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.