My left hip is utterly worn out, aching from the weight of my daughter. She likes this side best and shimmies her way from the top of my bone to the bottom of my breast. I don’t know where she thinks she’s going but somewhere she wanna be more than any place comfortable for me.
My pilates-loving, cross-fit overachieving behind didn’t know the truth about life ten years ago. I cannot recall anyone sufficiently warning me about the middle-aged body breaking. The way teeth begin to decay and skin on the neck starts to sag, and the left big toe randomly goes numb. Or babies and episiotomies. Or the kind of bone-tired that makes you dead to anything except staying alive.
Regularly, I beg God for my daughter to fall asleep without an hour of squirming, spit bubbles, and seething. God refuses to answer this prayer for reasons I will never understand. So tonight, I whispered, “God, you are inexhaustible.”
The truth of it began to calm me in my body and watered the seed of patience in my soul. When it comes to my time, I want total control. This is the schedule. Here are the plans. Rest is coming. I need this because I am exhaustible. Managing energy is critical to my capacity to connect, but God presses me to rely on grace in motherhood. There is no managing anything. Rest is in minutes and pockets, not in days and sleeps.
It is never enough. But God is enough.
Tonight, after a walk with my pastor and friend, we sat on her couch to talk more. Five minutes in, my lap is covered in pee. I changed a diaper, kept my pee pants, and said yes when they asked if I wanted to stay for dinner. This is what it means for life to be unmanageable. For time to not be controlled. For shame to lose its power.
In our weakness, his power is made perfect. Grace is inexhaustible.
Most of us believe that shame is inextricably connected to need. We hide faults, failures, and feelings. Others train us to keep dark thoughts hidden, divorce our bodies from our minds, and live disintegrated. Growing in grace means we begin to tether the compartmentalized fragments to love. Accepting our humanity leads to kindness, gentleness, and mercy.
We were not created for perfection. Needs are normal.
My heart is heavy and hard this week. Heavy over the racist attacks by a white supremacist in Buffalo, another shooting in Laguna Hills, CA, at a Taiwanese church, and another in Winston-Salem, NC, where my brother was born, thirty minutes from my hometown. Five other shootings happened the same weekend.
I either cry or feel unspeakable rage at the local Target buying baby food pouches. The empty shelves where the formula should be makes me feel frightened. Hard over the cruel way of this world. 192 Republican Senators voted against $28M in aid to address the shortage - thank God it passed anyway, including allowing WIC to place foreign formula orders to keep feeding babies of women and families currently facing poverty.
Right-wing pundits like Allie B. Stuckey tweeted that formula shouldn’t go to babies at the border during a shortage because America first! She’s saying the quiet part out loud because what they mean by pro-life is pro-birth. Outside their pro-birth scope is feeding, clothing, welcoming, loving people who are not American, and let’s get more to the point, white, and sharper now, rich, mostly white. The hostility toward policies that address poverty, family leave, maternal death rates, and, yes, racism further demonstrates that these folks don’t care one iota about the majority of babies and parents who love them.
God help me; you are inexhaustible.
Part of Romans 5:20 says, “But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound…”
I don’t bring this up to be trite or pat anyone on the hand or wave a wand of evangelical apathy over these significant problems. I bring it up because it’s true. The world is heavy; the sins of pride and greed rampant, the temptation to harden the heart severe.
Neighbor, we are held by a God of grace, and his face is visible in the ones we love.
When sin increases, grace increases all the more. Despite this shit show, our flourishing requires us to see God for ourselves daily, to remain anchored to hope. We must stay vigilant and aware, yes. But we must also remain steadfast in faithfulness and joy.
Where do you see God? I see him in my daughter’s gap-toothed smile. I feel him when my boys come to the bedside begging for breakfast. He is alive in my husband’s tenderness. A glimpse of his goodness is at the table, laughing and crying with friends. He is in the blackbird on my back fence and shining in the crimson and rust-colored sunset I saw in my dreams. God is at work in my achy hips and aging body and at home in the darkness of our world.
He is a very present help in time of need.
My heart is with you this morning as you wake. You are loved and wanted, beloved and beautiful. Holy and here now. (Thank God you are here now.) May our hearts be wise and tender.
Blessing you in my prayers,
Ashley
God is inexhaustible
What a timely encouragement. Sweet and truthful words my soul needed ❤️