Sunday, December 16, 2007
How long must we wait sometimes? I have been struggling with waiting...............for some time now. Sometimes, actually to be truthful, I often find many reasons to question the sincerity of my faith, but when I dig deep I know it remains. I know it has always been inside of me from the time I was a mere child. I've not shared but with very few that as a tiny little girl I would pray to the angels to give me wings so that I could visit Heaven and crawl upon my grandmother's lap. She died when I was too young to remember anything about her, other than I wanted to be with her so far away. There was like a hero aspect I placed upon my grandmother. This longing to return to her has never left and I believe one day she will be the one to greet me at the gates of Heaven, and I will know her fully. As a little girl I was told about Jesus and His birth at Christmas and that Mary was so loved by God that she was His chosen one. For many years in my immature mind, I envisioned being loved so much by God that I would be chosen. I also vividly remember being told and later reading the story of Joseph and his coat of many colors. Oh, how I wanted to be so loved that I could have a coat like his. I know, it was silly. It was the innocence of a child without years of experience to learn different thought processes, more realistic comprehension.
I remember praying desperately that God would suddenly make my daddy's leg like new. Sometimes I felt that us kids had done something to cause him so much pain and trouble with his leg. That was before I understood what WWII was and what it did to the soldiers who fought for us against great evil. I remember hoping that my cousin Ricky would one day be able to leave his wheelchair and walk like all the rest of us. Ricky had polio when he was little and it took from him his ability to use his legs. I read many a book about individuals with disabilities and I took it all into my heart. There were two books I remember especially about a girl named Karen who had cerebral palsy and what her family endured. How they hoped and prayed that she could get better if they did this and did that. She had black labs and they would love on her and encourage her and I believe they even helped her maintain a sitting position, assisting her from falling over. I would always gravitate towards kids in my school who were 'different' somehow, physically and or cognitively. I would lag behind and wait to hold doors open for them to enter a school building. I remember going out of my way to speak to others and perhaps to simply 'touch' another on an arm or a shoulder when I would be out and about and my radar would sense a different presence close by.
However, this does not mean that I prayed for a special needs child. God saw fit to give me one, all the same. People say we such mamas are chosen; I have mixed feelings about that thought. As in the beautiful words of Mary's Song that is frequently heard for Christmas, I wonder like other moms in my shoes, " if a wiser one should have had my place?"
Clay's huge focus the last several months has been the increasing desire to 'work' for his living. He dreams up job after job, fixates upon them and sees absolutely no limitations in his mind that he be able to work. He wrote to his aide recently, "I do not want to work at home. I want to go work at an office!" Last night and today it has been State Farm Insurance.............writing on the computer like a good neighbor, state farm is there. He asked yesterday for ties, three dress shirts and a coat (sports jacket) for his work clothes. So I try really hard to appease him in however manner I can create. In my heart, I cry because I do not have the power to provide him with the abilities he desperately needs to function in any capacity outside of our home environment. I tire because he continues to grow heavier, desiring greater independence and I just seem to grow weaker in meeting his needs by myself. For a very long time, I felt for sure my faith was too weak and inadequate because if it were strong enough, Clay would have overcome the most disabling of his physical abilities. My faith should have made him well............it hasn't. I now try really hard to comprehend that it does not mean I have little enough faith for changes. I try, some days more successfully than others, to accept that God made Clay this way for a specific purpose that we are yet to fully understand. I try to hold to belief that God works His will and that He will continue to provide our needs, especially concerning Clay. Tonight as he was dreaming about being an insurance guy, (his words), I told him that I dream about being something different too sometimes. That I ponder what I would be doing in a job outside of home. To wonder about success and the ability to assist with household costs and have something of my own earnings and discretionary freedoms. Sometimes I wonder if our marriage will bear fruits of positive changes and flexibility. Sometimes I wonder if Clay is the glue that has kept us from giving up on one another at times. As long as we have him I think God will always make inside of us responsible beings who cannot walk away because we grow tired and frustrated with the constant demands that have little to no resolutions at this time. How long yet before steps of resolution seem hopeful reality?
And so I wait and I want. Sounds and seems awfully self centered now that I actually put physical words to the longing. I want to feel a greater sense of accomplishment from 49 years of living. I am curious about who I might have been, what I might have attempted, the difference in surviving the financial stresses that have all been upon Fred's stooping back.
Please, I am not soliciting anything from you unless it would be prayers. I am merely trying to make peace in my heart with things that have weighed heavy upon me for this last year. Perhaps writing some of it down will help me master a different, more positive perspective. Prayerfully God will intervene in all our lives with greater peace, greater hope and understandings. I need greater patience for perseverance and stronger character. I need to understand that waiting and wanting can be very different from hoping and needing. I pray that His mercy and grace will rain upon each and everyone of us in ways that we cannot question His everlasting presence in our lives. I pray that the true meaning of Christmas spills from our very hearts and fills us with renewed hope and greater faith and witness to His glory.
Love and hugs, Annette
