Today I am hurting.  I don’t know why I am hurting.  I can just feel this rising panic engulfing every part of my very being.  Feeling the fear rise.  Feeling as if I am sinking into a bed with hot coals.  I feel slightly panicked, and depleted from energy.  Almost like I cannot cope anymore.  All around me I see people suffering, and I cannot save the whole world.  I can’t even save myself from my own self.  The negative thoughts that plague my mind.  I couldn’t sleep last night.  I had so many thoughts going through my head.  Plans to leave for next year.  Plans to go away.

For a long time I have felt like I am the biggest failure on planet Earth.  Failed to keep my son safe.  Failed to do things right.  But actually we all make mistakes.  If we don’t try we won’t succeed.  But we never fail.  This is what I have come to realize recently.  Keep trying and eventually things will start falling into place and make sense in your world of hurt.

Plans and more plans.  I just have to trust that it will become a real story and not one of those dreams in Hannah’s life.  Like when I dreamt for 9 long months whilst I was pregnant with my son, for him to go home to be with Jesus.  It seems like my entire life is about waiting, waiting, waiting.  Sometimes, I feel like its some cruel joke making me wait for something and then right at the end it gets taken away.  It happened with Sebastian.  It happened with Elouise.  It happened with Micheline.  And it happened to my brother’s baby David.

I am sitting at my desk, and I don’t really care if the tears are falling out of my soul.  I am just a broken woman.  A helpless woman, a woman slaved to sin but saved by grace; trying to live a better life, trying to follow the righteous path of God, and trying to be still in God’s presence, which sometimes is often impossible.

Strength in character is developed through the trials of life.  How do you face your trials?  Do you face your trials with grumbling and contempt?  Or do you face it with good Godly attitude?  Should life be easy?  Life is about struggle and about maintaining a godly attitude in the midst of struggle.  No-where in the animal kingdom is life not a struggle, and it is no different for humans.  I often wonder, what impact I have left behind on people when I was going through the depths of grief when my son died.  I am not sure.  I hope I impacted them in some small way? That they saw God at work within me.  That they realized that through this trial that God was clearly working through me, and because of this trial I became stronger, and that I started to rely on God more heavily to pull me through all the pains of life.

But when you love someone, you want the best for them, and you don’t want to see them suffer.  You want to see them come out on the other end without having to go through the pain of life’s trials.  But the problem is this: you somehow have to walk the through the wilderness alone. No one can walk it for you.  The key is to keep walking, not to go back to old ways of thinking/acting that don’t work anyways and just lead you round in an endless circle, like the Israelites.   Yes, people can pray for you.  People can say they are there with you walking it, but they are not actually wearing your shoes are they?  I guess I have come to the realization that each one of us has our own trials and though we have to walk it ourselves, we can get the support that we need if we ask for help.  Help won’t come knocking on your door.   But if you ask for help, people can help and lighten the weight for you but still they won’t be able to walk that trial for you.

No one could walk the road that I took when my son died.  Only I could walk that road, and yes they could offer words of encouragement and comfort but ultimately I had to focus my eyes on the cross and unburden at the foot of the cross, so that God could heal me from the pain that was plaguing my heart.  The pain that plagued my soul. Although many people tend to stop talking to you or leave you alone when you are in the middle of a trial because people simply just don’t know how to respond to the pain, they get uncomfortable with your deep intense grief, or the sadness that plagues your soul.  But lately now when I see people struggling I can empathize with them, because through my own trials I learnt that being all alone can be very lonesome, so even if I will sound like a ‘nagging wife’ or a nagging woman I will carry on supporting the broken-hearted, making sure that they know that they are not alone.

Today I am hurting.  My head hurts, my heart hurts.  I am overwhelmed with a whole host of uncertainties in my life, but I know that God will make a way where there seems to be no way.  Not everything is a lost cause.  You just have to live by faith, and trust that the Lord will provide for you and that he will keep opening the doors.  After all it is the Holy Spirit that plants ideas in our heads and it is up to follow the ideas – or not.

Anyways I don’t know where this is leading.  Just my muffled thoughts, trying to make sense of my world, the environment around me, and how I can move forward without falling into a bed with hot coals.  I just want to keep my head above water, and be an encourager and be a supporter to the people that struggle.  If I can impact at least one person today then I will be happy.

I pray for peace for everyone, and that you may come to know the Lord’s will for your life. Shalom my friends.