Yesterday was August 6th and four years ago it was the due date for a baby we miscarried before Elijah. I don't think about it a lot and in fact I forgot about it last year. I don't want to take this event and wear it like a badge shaped like a "V" for "victim" or bring it up awkwardly in conversation to make people feel sorry or weird. However, I don't want to forget it. God does not waste events like this one in our lives and one of my prayers afterward when I was angry, sad, and confused was that God would not allow me to miss learning from it and that I would see His goodness in it.
I love Habakkuk 3:17-19:
Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
19 God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer's;
he makes me tread on my high places.
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
19 God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer's;
he makes me tread on my high places.
God answered my prayers and gave us Elijah and Simon. I dreaded August 6, 2010 for months before it came. By then, I was pregnant with E and comforted by his new life while remembering a lost one. However, I do wonder the state of my heart had God in His goodness not answered the prayer for children with a "yes." I think I would have been stripped down to nothing more than verse 19, "God, the Lord, is my strength." God was not good because he gave us children but because he was good. This is where I should live my life today whether I see fruit appearing or not.
This afternoon, I had to carry a kicking, screaming, angry child to his room to calm down. We talked about Jesus and why hitting mom is wrong and selfish hearts and forgiveness. I worry and fear when I don't see fruit in his life. But God.... He is my strength and I will rejoice in Him and the plans He is working out while my eyes are too finite to see.
Ladies, rejoice in the Lord where you are right now. Snotty noses, pee-pee sheets, and screaming children. Life is hard and most of us, especially me, have no idea what hard is. We should ask the Christians in Iraq. There may not be much blooming, and the buds may have a bitter taste, and your couch may smell funky and you are very, very tired but God is at work. Jesus died for us. We belong to Him and He's given us the kingdom of heaven.
He is our joy and salvation, not our circumstances. May He have mercy on me for constantly forgetting this truth.
