When You Feel Like You've Got Nothing To Give

This.   The everyday mayhem of six kids and homeschooling and messes and just life.

This is what it is.  And it is so easy to just fall off the map.  Just feet moving forward but blindly. Days of difficulty and before you know it you're lost...in life.

Lost in the day and consumed with the stuff of it,  and it is so very easy to just miss God.

When you are busy, so very busy with the details and the dailies, you can just plain fall off this map and fall apart, and how did I get here? And where was I going? And life can just suck the life out of you.

And these hands want to give, live open, live full but there are days when you just feel like you've got nothing to give.

My girl she says this.  In the middle of the spelling lesson, the daily meltdown, this dyslexic child screams it, "I just can't do this!  I'm just a failure and I fail every single day and what is the point of doing this if I'm just going to fail again?"

I know.  Don't I know these words?  I've lived them.  I've felt them. 

And how do you get up and try again when you see only failure on the horizon, and you know just how hard it is going to be?

Words come from lips, mine, "I know that it's hard.  I know you're not going to get them all right.  I know you'll never be perfect.  But you have to keep going, erase the mistakes, and learn from them.  You are learning.  I know you don't see it, all you see is the mistakes, but you are.  You have to just trust God to help you."

These words from my own mouth, stop me short.  How can I be so dull?

These days of weary, worn failing and falling I too have been listening to lies.  Lies that I too should just pack it up and quit.  And why try, when I know I'll never be perfect?

My Heavenly Father, he speaks softly, "Listen, I know it's hard.  I also know on this side of heaven, you're never going to get it completely right, that's why I sent my Son to get it right in your place.  And when you trust me, and trust in His blood to cover all your mistakes, they get erased, like they never even were.  And all this mess of mistakes?  You're learning too, and even though you don't see it, I do.  Just trust me to take your mess and make you mine. Trust my love to change you and keep on learning and leaning on me."

Words for two hearts and two lives in need of parenting today.  For all our messes and mistakes, we know that it's His perfect love poured out through open arms on a cross, that perfects us.

 This holy remembering, it fills.  Takes the empty hands and makes full.  Gives life, to give away.

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