Every good and perfect gift is from above. Got it. Wonderful marriage, check. Beautiful kids, check. Amazing family, great friends, great church, check, check and check. I appreciate what I have. I get it. I know what gifts are.
Joy comes in the morning. Yep, got that one too. Everything will look better after a good night's sleep. The pain will lessen when you can see the sun again. Jesus rose from His grave in the morning. Check. I know what joy is. And I know what gifts have been given to me.
At least I thought I did.
I was recently reading about the word anguish and how it can co-exist with joy. Synonyms are mental distress. Not just pain, but pain and anxiety. Not just suffering, but suffering and dread. The origin of anguish includes the meaning "to choke." Reading these words took me back 14 years to a place in time that I thought would do me in for sure.
The year I was pregnant with Tristan, our first-born daughter, was madness. I had suffered two miscarriages just months before and was not emotionally ready to be pregnant again. In the first 8 weeks, I showed indications of another unsustainable pregnancy, but 2 weeks of bed rest, my God in Heaven and a stubborn and strong little girl held us all together. But those few days were the easy part. This was the year that my husband would lose his business, and I would lose my mom. I didn't know it at the time, but four years later, Greg would lose his Dad and we would also lose our home. Our first home. I loved that house. It didn't have much curb appeal, but my husband, carpenter extraordinaire, had made it Builder's Magazine worthy on the inside. It was less than 5 minutes away from my parents' home and less than 60 seconds away from my sister's. By this time we had lived there 3 1/2 years and I was pretty sure we'd be buried in the back yard some day. But God was moving in a different direction. If I'd been paying closer attention, I might have been able to see my hand in front of my face in the midst of those winds of change, but I wasn't looking. I was reeling. I couldn't fathom why God would choose this time to bring a child into our world. Into our mess.
During that year we were in & out of endless meetings trying to save our business. I remember hoping people would take pity on us once I began to show. We had no income. The weight of the world was on my husband's shoulders. No work. Pregnant wife. I look back and I honestly don't remember how we ate. Our families must have literally kept us alive, but it's really all a blur. I think if either Greg or I had had any money at all, we'd have called a cab and told the driver to go as far as he could, as fast as he could, and we'd walk the rest of the way to anywhere but here.
Mom died in late summer, and 4 weeks later her granddaughter came. I'd love to say I lay in that hospital bed and all the troubles of the world went away at the sight of her face, but that wasn't our reality. I was still trying to deal with loss on so many levels, and it was about to get worse with a little something called postpartum depression. We took our daughter home in Greg's truck, now the only vehicle we and the bank owned, and had to borrow $20 from his parents to pick up diapers on the way. We had nothing that had not been given to us. And I mean nothing. My husband had not worked in months. It was oppressive, and seemed so wrong to me that we should be under this cloud when we'd just had a child. My mom was gone, and I had no idea what I was doing as a mom myself. I couldn't even form the thought "I don't understand" because my mind was so shrouded and angry and in what I now can recognize as anguish. Mental distress. Pain and anxiety. Suffering and dread. And all the while people were sending me congratulatory messages and cards and bringing me gifts and asking to see this beautiful new little life, while I was dying inside. My very existence was one big contradiction. And I was choking on it.
We muddled through the first few months of her life, although I'm not really sure how. Did I mention we had nothing? Tristan was a delightful baby. Her only flaw was that during the day, she would only sleep 45 minutes at a time, when I could have used 3 hours! But as babies go, that's pretty remarkable. I remember walking into her room at night and thinking, "I get it Lord. I know why you sent her now. Because we never would have held on for ourselves. But we did for her." I thought I'd tied up all the crises in a neat little bow with that theory. Every good and perfect gift is from above. Yep, I get it. There she is, and she's perfect. Check.
Chris had come to live with us when Tristan was 10 months old, having no idea the landmine of financial distress and emotional depression he was coming into, so we put on our best brave faces and had some good times. He was and still is an amazing big brother. I regret terribly the fog I was in during his young years. He has a fantastic sense of humor and completely charmed his little sister with it. No one could make her laugh like Chris. Lacie came along two years later and, as funny and delightful as Chris and Tristan were, Lacie was that sweet. She just melted me. But I had never healed or recovered from the depression I went through with Tristan, and her little entrance only made it worse. We lost Greg's Dad that year, too, just one week after his sister's wedding. Again, I couldn't understand God's plan. Why could there not be lasting joy? Why were the good moments so fleeting? Still hanging by a thread to that house, we lived there the first 18 months of Lacie's life, and then the very thin thread had to be cut. Once again, and still, I was in anguish. Loss. Anxiety.
I look back at pictures of those times and I'm amazed that we're smiling. I've said to Greg, "Why in the heck were we smiling?! We were miserable! And exhausted!" As I said before, some of those years are truly a blur. I don't know how we made it. Financially, emotionally, and every other -ly, we shouldn't have.
Fast forward a little over a decade, and here I sit reading about anguish, what it means and how it can coexist with joy. So that's what that was, I thought. Huh. And then it hit me. As I was mulling over those years and the tornado of emotions I was caught up in, and wondering how there could be any good in the midst of so much bad, I realized that, up to that moment, I had realized absolutely nothing! Those few simple moments over my child’s crib, moments thinking I was recognizing the gifts that had been given to me, were so brief and sped by me so fast that I didn't hold on. I couldn't. But with a clearer picture, I see that those years of mourning were immediately turned to joy. Lasting joy. I just didn't know it. A death, and then, a life. My mother gone and then a delightful child. God doesn’t always give and take away. Sometimes He takes away, and then He gives. He took my mother from hell on earth and gave her ultimate healing. Then He sent this beautiful baby who, thirteen years later, is the most exuberant young lady I've ever known. Just watching her love and zeal makes me tired, but marvelously tired! In the midst of great loss and sorrow and anxiety, joy was growing up right before my very eyes. In the midst of pain and fear and dread, I had been given a son. A beautiful, gifted, witty blue-eyed son, the spitting image of his father, who just wanted to be loved and enjoy life with us. In the midst of choking on everything dark and oppressive, I was given another daughter who has wanted nothing for every day of her life but to spend time in my lap, draw me a picture, and tell me she loves me. Joy. Times three. Right in my own house. Right in every house I've ever lived in since then that isn't my own. And my husband. The man who stayed. The man who could have thrown up his hands and said he couldn't handle the mess, the spider-webbed dungeon that was my mind. He could have said it's too hard. I can't take care of you. Being on my own would be easier. But he kept getting up every morning to provide for us. And coming home to me every night. And miraculously, at some point, he made me smile. And I have the pictures to prove it. Such good gifts. Perfect gifts. Not just perfect in their creation, but in their timing. They were given to me at precisely the moment I needed them. There would be many, many mornings before I could recognize them in all their goodness and perfection. But thank God I have finally opened my eyes. Thank You for opening them for me, and thank You for the anguish. I don't believe I could ever have recognized perfect joy without it.
