A Bad Week. But God Has Fireflies, So There's That.

When I started blogging, my plan was just the simple process of paging through my journals and writing posts created from them chronologically. I promised God I’d blog til it was all out there - and it seemed easy enough at the time. I was at a really good place of feeling God’s peace, and grounded in hope for whatever life was bringing next, in the beginning.

But since I started blogging it’s like all hell has broken loose. We’ve had both our cars tank, two emergency root canals, my husband’s 9 to 5 restructured their commission plan (not in our favor), close friends moved away, and surprise bills and fees that we didn’t even know were coming, came. It’s all been crazy things we couldn’t plan for or remedy easily; life is pressing in on all sides right now. So every week lately, when I plan to go to journal entry number whatever, and pick up where I left off... I can’t. I sat here on Tuesday night (I usually post Wednesdays) and wondered how I was going to be real this week, because I can’t even read those journals right now. I have to write new ones instead. The only way I can write blogs is when I feel like God is in the moment with me. And the only moment God and I have been in together lately is me needing one massive, suffocating, hug. I need God to just break the rules and manifest in my room for a day and make the world stop and just sit with me. Just, SIT. Why can’t He just DO THAT? Pleeeeease.

Now before I get all symbolic on you, I want you to know - I already know where you're going. Me right now? I’m the story of that girl with the hole in her canoe, begging God to save her, but when an old man comes in his creaky boat to tow her to shore she says, “nope, no thanks, God’s going to rescue me soon, bye”. A couple more creaky boats go by the same way, and finally God reveals, “That was me! I sent them to help you!” Yeah, well, that’s the story. And I'm sitting in my sinking boat. The exhaustion of grief is so deep, you guys, the cycle so never-ending, that my saving has got to be loud for me to notice. Loud enough to wake up my wilting soul to the fact that God is still involved here somehow. I need a big I LOVE YOU, this time, God. No creaky boat men please, as lovely and kind as they are. I need a cruise ship with Your Name on it to drop a golden ladder into my canoe if I'm going to feel encouraged.

And here's what I decided twenty-four hours later: I actually don't think He was disappointed in me about that.

I know I know - don’t ask for a sign, they say, it’s bad, it’s wrong. Well, okay. I mean, if you tell God you’ll believe in Him only if you win the lottery, win your ball game, win LIFE... you’re in that wrong group. If you say “don’t let my flower die and I’ll believe”, wrong again (I think I did that once back when I was new at it all). God doesn’t prove that way. But asking God to break through the storm clouds with a big ol’ beacon of hope you can't miss, and you don’t care what it is as long as it’s bright? There are times in life when you just need something, anything, enough to convince the anchor that’s pulling all your hope down that HE KNOWS, HE SEES IT ALL, and, HE’S STILL THERE.

So? This Tuesday night I was struggling, broken, and defeated. Frustrated that so much of life’s pain is taking SO LONG to go away, and how I just cannot seem to hear anything from God to dilute my anxiety. I can’t blog. Just show up here for me somehow God. Anyway, somehow. Help me not shut-down. Ugh, God, I just need Your love, LOUDLY.

Nothing.

So I did: I gave up. Something just snaps in me sometimes and I go into self-protection mode - the day was too long. I close my computer and look around for something to show how much I don’t care (another coping mechanism). What works? It’s almost 9pm. It’s getting dark. I’m a female with no biceps, and? Well, I’m going to go mountain biking in the middle of the forest on a trail I’ve never ridden in the dark. That’ll do it.

(This is my thing. I have to battle through something, fight for something, when things get hopeless. I can’t just lay down. Somewhere in my mind it made sense to say, I can fail, fine, but at least I rode my bike in the dark. Whatever though. It works. And I had my phone and mace and all that so just stop Mom.)

Hopeless adrenaline is my most super-hero drug, apparently, because I just RODE. There’s places where the trail splits into two, and I’d take the mean rocky side, which I wouldn’t usually. I’m not that good, so I fell twice, but just got back up and kept barreling on. Not because I’m all strong and brave, but because I was in shut-down mode and nothing can make me show emotion when I’m there. Nothing can break through. I was barely looking at the scenery that usually gave me so much joy. I was stone-cold. The ride was a battle between me and life and I wasn’t going to be weak. Normally, I only go riding at certain times of the day, or only when my husband is with me, because the woods are thick and the trail, a 6-inch beaten path. But I was so done trying to make my life safe this week, and failing at it, that the thought of meeting a bear in the woods sounded boring at best. At least I had a plan for that and could battle through. Life? I didn’t even know. I don’t know what to do. I need a break, and I can’t have one.

This trail is only a couple miles. I’ve done it dozens of times and it never gets boring with all the twists and turns. The last quarter mile or so it opens up into a clearing and the path slopes through the most beautiful trees in a movie kind of way. It’s my favorite trail because it ends with this place of no stress - you don’t have to worry about hitting trees or rocks or turning sharply - it’s just beautiful sloping riding in the middle of a place where no one knows. A reward at the end of a long haul.

As I came up to this last section it was well past dark, almost ten. I had made it just in time to save the last bit of gray sky to make it out. But when I burst out of the woods and turned into the clearing, the sight broke me. I skidded to a stop and my whole shut-down mode dissolved...

There were fireflies. EVERYWHERE. I think I’ve seen like two fireflies my whole life, and they didn’t have company like this. The whole forest was sparkling, and I had to drive through it alone, with no witness. The weakness in my body from the whole first part of the ride caught up with me, and I had to pause and stop multiple times. My hard exterior and hopeless adrenaline were history - the little silly bugs had broken through. Sparkles? Well, they’re my thing. God knows this.

If I was going to pray for something to fill my heart to make it through this week, it would not have been that. It would’ve been something more useful, more tangible, more epic. Things would come into focus, problems would be solved, and answers given. But the gift of fireflies was exactly what I needed. The love of God plowed through all my hard for a moment in their little gentle flickering, silent and un-striving as they were. They don’t buzz around or fly erratically. They float, disappearing and reappearing without a plan or purpose. Seeing this scene did me no good in the natural to help my problems go away. But the value of them was even clearer because of that, cause it’s like God is all relaxed about my issues. He’s not worried like I am. He’s not interested in running around and making things work out the way I think I need them to, to be happy. He just wanted me to know I mattered. You can think I’m silly and dumb, but I felt like God wanted me to know I was the only one that saw those fireflies that night in that spot. That all their millions of twinkling was just, and only, for me. It was my cruise ship, I was saved.

Okay, so I didn’t get a cruise ship again today. But it was like getting just a little more gas, and I can go a little bit further for now. And I’m just hoping that next week God will have another idea, and that I wont miss it.

That’s all I have this week.

#HeKnows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsccUg4TDd8