rest

The combination of my father's cancer and this journey in foster care has made this the most out of control season of my life. Add a baby, a house we can't sell, one illness after another, and the constant reminders that our dear friends in Haiti are suffering and in genuine crisis, and it takes considerable effort every day to take His Word seriously when it tells me not to worry.  

It does not matter what I want. It does not matter how hard I try. I can't make dad feel better...can't influence what is ultimately going to happen with these dear girls. Can't change what they've been through or what they might face, don't even have any say. We cannot sell the house, and the additional financial strain and mental burden eats away when we let it. Then there are seven kiddos who bless me, burden me, worry me, warm me.

I fall to sleep before my head hits the pillow every night, but when I'm up with baby again and again, my mind races with what ifs and thoughts that often have me despairing, tossing and turning. 

Yesterday, after another case-worker quit several weeks ago and still hadn't been replaced, I found myself worrying for our two girls, their next weighty court case quickly approaching. Who is advocating for them? What if this cycle they've been through so many times continues? What if they head back into the same situation again when this season is finished?  What if all the progress and stability is simply buried under more trauma and chaos? What if they go? What if they don't? How are we gonna make it, either way, and who's going to explain it to Ben?

Every time we think the system couldn't be more broken, it's worse.

I rock the baby back to sleep with prayers for my father, back and forth, back and forth, and it is hard to breathe, walking this awful road of chemo and radiation and illness and suffering and tests and doctors again.

in Haiti,Granny is sick and in the hospital in a season when even getting to the hospital was almost impossible...a hospital with no fuel, Leme and Gertha talk continually of the challenges of getting, and paying for, food...cholera....gangs.

I was stressing it all through dark hours last night, and He reminded me it doesn't matter.

My girls matter. 

My father matters.

Our brothers and sisters in Haiti matter.

I matter to Him.

But the circumstances and possible circumstances and potential circumstances? They don't phase Him. He's not watching over me, weighing out all the possible outcomes and playing them through like I am (trying to). He's not worried about the determinations of man, nor the decisions of doctors, nor the paths of my children. He isn't stewing over the gangs in Haiti nor wishing He could do something about each of our circumstances.

He knows. He sees. And He's on the throne.

It doesn't matter, because He's in it, all of it--now and what will be--and He's GOT it. 

Why do I try to figure it all out when I've already determined He can be trusted?

Why do I lie awake, mentally plotting the selling of our home (even when everything we know to do has long been done?), the best possible legal outcomes for our girls (even when I don't know WHAT those even are?), the paths of my children (though I don't choose them),  the future for my dad (when I can't touch it?), or what to do about the entire country of Haiti (as if I know or could do it, even if I did)!

Sigh, Stacey.

Can't I trust Him?

The One with the light burden...the One who is offering rest.