The fight is fixed: even when you picked the fight

I gave birth to a healthy baby boy 6 weeks ago. The birth was everything I prayed for. God answered each one of my prayers. Down to when and how it would happen to how fast his delivery would be. I felt like God sat at my side and wrote down detailed notes. Fast forward to today, I feel like he is nowhere to be found.

During these 6 weeks, I have been at war with myself. No, not postpartum depression but the battle with the financial burden that is thrown on you when you take maternity leave and depend on state disability. All things that someone wouldn’t think possible, has happened. From the nurse giving NO date for when I became disabled, to my employer mixing up vacation and sick time request. I swear each week, it seemed as if God personally turned his back on me.

Cooing over my newborn, I  tried to keep it together. I  reminded myself that bills will get paid, that our three older children will be taken care of and that this is all temporal. All the things the bible tells me, I recited. However, each week, I also dealt with anxiety, and frustration. I checked and rechecked the mail. I logged in daily to check my status on the disability website. Having hope that the paperwork would be in and the money would be on the way if not already there, waiting for me. And every week, I was let down. I became angry. Frustrated with God. He knows my situation, why would He let this happen? I began using the bible to refute what I knew about Him and His promises.

“God hates me”. I sputtered this in between frustrated tears. “Nothing ever goes the way it should”. Obviously forgetting what God just proved to me weeks before. The feeling I had felt when my labor had lined up with my prayers, had sudden vanished. The many testimonies in the past, where God has been my deliverer, provider and comforter all had seemed distant. I couldn’t reach far enough to hold on to what I already knew about Him.

In this fight with myself, I began tugging at the fact that maybe, just maybe God himself wanted me to fail. That He wanted me somehow to give up on this relationship. To believe that He wasn’t all that I believed Him to be. In my selfish, child tantrum I didn’t lean on the fact that what I may have been experiencing was all apart of his plan to grow me. A little piece of His puzzle to use me.

My life can’t be full of ” Look, I asked God for this and He gave it to me”. In my life, the life that I have surrendered to Him, I want to relate to someone He has called. I want to be used to win souls to His kingdom doors. In my pouting, I missed the real point that to this madness,” blessing don’t always come wrapped in pretty packages”. Many of  my blessings have come from the dirt that He has made us from.

Although I felt like God was sleeping in my boat, he was always with me. My conviction comes from taken for granted what God does for me. For speaking as though God wasn’t on my side when I know better. He is always in my corner. Even during the weeks or  rather (rounds of fighting with my salvation) God was always in my corner. He still is. At the end, I am led here: To victory!

Our marriage is still healthy, our children are still alive. My newborn is growing and healthy. The important things are just where they were before this happened. This money that I had been so anxiously waiting on, wouldn’t have done anything but made me comfortable, when all that matters is that..We are alive and well.

The worry, anxiety, frustration, tears, were all for what? This fight with myself, that I created was all because something didn’t go as I planned. God allowed me to war with myself to remind me that these temporal things don’t change a thing. That He always takes care of us and is ALWAYS in our corner. Never walking away when we begin to doubt ourselves or better yet, when we begin to doubt him.

³¹ “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Matthew 6:25-34

Be encouraged!