This week I’ve had two people tell me that I am thriving as a young woman. While the compliment made me smile, I questioned myself. Evaluated how I felt about my life in this very season. Am I thriving?
My immediate answer was no. I wasn’t thriving at all. I’m at my whit’s end with switching up medications, them failing to work and my body drowning over and over again. I don’t feel like a very patient mother, trying each day to show my children the same grace that my Father shows me. My tone of voice has been louder than it should be with my six year old, and all the while people see me as thriving.
I really prayed into this. I prayed the Lord would show me what thriving in each season really means. Why people may look at someones life and see fruit, when all they see is a bare ground. The soil has been tilled up a thousand times over, and they cannot see the produce.
The Farm House we had to flee.
I asked him to give me a literal example of how my life looks like to him right now. How my actions parallel his , or contradict his. How in the world am I thriving , when all I feel is that I am surviving!
We have one magnadoodle in the mini van. Just one. In case you were wondering I have three children. Count them. Three in the van. Guess what the main attraction is that starts WW3 as soon as we enter the van?
With all three yelling at me that it was THEIR TURN, and NOT FAIR, I did what any good Mother would do. I turned up the Christmas music as loud as I could without busting their tiny ear drums, and handed the ” draw thing” to the baby. Driving along I saw in my children’s tired, grumpy states what He was trying to show me.
When we arrived home I looked up the definition of thriving:
To grow or develop vigorously. To make steady progress.
I am in no way comparing my childrens loudness and disrespect to my adversities of life, so just hear me out. When life gets loud and I cannot fix the situation that is behind me ( literally, my kids were behind me ) I turn up what is good. What is happy, and light. What brings me joy in all the tears, and I press on. I drive to my destination ANYWAY.
This past year has made me ” develop vigorously” so to speak. Many lifes events have left scars I cannot remove, but I have chosen to keep moving. Keep going, and keep trusting.
I’ve had no choice but to make ” steady progress” as my life goes on regardless if I feel the need to stop it for a few days to catch up on sleep. To stop the tears from pouring, and my body from aching. I NEED to press forward, so I do.
Perhaps this is a trait many develop in hard situations.
I am not choosing to ignore the events that hurt me deeply, but rather I am choosing to deal with the heart issues they penetrated as I move forward.
I refuse to be a victim, or to pull others down with the weight I am slowly lifting off my shoulders. If I keep walking to my destination, eventually I will gain enough momentum in my spirit that those wounds will heal. They will fall off like shedding skin, as I , as we greet our new skin.
That produce in the ground is a potato, or a carrot. They grow underground, unseen by our eyes until we lift them up. Until we choose to LOOK to see what we have planted, what has grown and flourished with all our tears watering it.
Nothing is ever in vain.