Learning to Breathe: Why I share my hard with you?

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

I like sharing my hard with you. I do not wish to move you to pity or for self-commiseration. Sharing hard is seldom done publicly. I started to share my hard to show how God's grace could meet me there. This was not so in my posts from last year.

I hope no one lives life the way I did last year.

Last year I was in a deep depression.

I couldn't spend time with my husband because I felt so sorry for him. Sorry he was stuck with me. I wanted him to have a beautiful wife, a healthy wife, a strong wife. He had to take upon himself so much to fill the void I had left. I felt ashamed and in that guilt I could not be near him. I couldn't enjoy my girls. How was I going to celebrate them being alive when other mothers where striped of their young ones? I couldn't reconcile the unfairness. And though I was grateful my girls were alive and well, I couldn't rejoice in that truth. I couldn't be around my mom. I was embarrassed of needing financial support from her to make ends meet at a time when I felt I should be supporting her. She had sacrificed so much to have us close to her for me to respond with shutting down to her attempts at closeness to me. I was angry at God. I didn't know how to pray or find Him. I didn't feel His love in my heart. I had grown a heart of rock. I lived in ungratefulness. If you have read my early posts you know I consider gratitude the secret to happiness. I practiced and preached intentional and constant gratitude. Oh, how unhappy I was without it and without seeking it.

None of the above is any longer true in my life, BUT now I can see I needed to go through that.

WHAT? WHY?!

God can do so much in our brokenness. Some of us have come to believe that to be good Christians we must portray a life that does not struggle in faith matters. Times are hard, but our faith doesn't falter; our trust is unwavering. Firmly rooted in the rock that is Christ, we are to smile at whatever life may throw at us. Well, I certainly believe such faith is possible and I desire such faith, but it is not always so and it is not bad.

Do you know who I could relate to in the times my faith was shaken? Most (if not all) the men of faith in the Bible! We find the ones who feel pressure to perform in front of other men that they disobeyed God to please men. We find the ones who are so done with the suffering around them they asked God to end their lives. We find those who didn't trust God would protect them and resorted to terrible lies. We find the ones who walked alongside Jesus and abandoned Him in His greatest time of need. We find those who succumbed to theirs temptations and did unspeakable things. And guess what? They were STILL called man of God.

I know now that I needed to go through that time in my life. Even when going through that time I knew I was Jacob in the desert wrestling with God. And when I came back from that desert, my faith would be stronger and I would go back to my Creator.
Often times we are too ashamed by our weaknesses to open up about them to others. The portrait of a perfect life can be inspiring to others, but it will most likely just move others to jealousy. And this portrait is a lie, and the people we are portraying it to do not know that. Let us be real and meet each other in the realness.

I acknowledge I let my pain drown me. I let it take me to Complain Town and drop me off at Too-tired-to-do-stuff Excuse Street, right across the No-one-understands-me Cafe. I told you at the beginning of the year I was not going to let that be my story anymore; I was going to choose love to be my story. But, as you may well know, resolve is not everlasting. We give up, fall down, and lift back up again. Sharing our hard opens me up to have you keep me motivated and on track. It gives you inside knowledge to better know how to pray for me and serve me. It lets you know I can't do this alone, which will also let you know it is OK if you too can't do it alone. It shows we need each other, and we desperately need God. It keeps you humble, knowing you are not perfect, you don't pretend to be perfect, and it is OK not to be perfect. God is still there and still loves us. He shines brighter in our weakness; it shows others whatever good they see in you in no way comes from you but from the goodness of God.

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain