Tempted to Be Weary

My birthday is coming up in the fall and the schedule for my chemotherapy indicates that I will spend my special day attached to the pump of toxicity. Noticing that scheduling quirk caused me to reflect on the circumstances of my last few birthdays:

• three years ago: preparing to sell our house and move as Husband took a new call
• two years ago: the week we realized Husband needed a medical leave for severe depression
• last year: at the hospital with my 3-year-old son and his ruptured appendix

A strange little tradition I've got there. I could find other formats to fill in with timelines of discouragement. Some weeks I feel like the frustrations, large and small, accumulate endlessly and I am tempted to be weary. I feel sometimes that I have suffered enough and have earned the right to throw up my hands and give in. Who can endure this? Who keeps paddling against this flow of bad mojo when the current does not slow?

God is so gentle with me. He has not once whacked me on the head for thinking these things. He reminds me that I'm not paddling, I'm sitting in the canoe and He is paddling.

The other night, while Husband was at a meeting, my youngest son vomited several times. It lasted for exactly the two hours that I was alone with the kids. I was nearly overwhelmed with the feeling that I could not continue, that life was becoming too much for me. God brought to mind the passage from Isaiah, "Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." (40:31).

I have never understood that "they will run and not grow weary" because God strengthens them. I now think of this every day. Life is so hard right now, and every day I am tempted to think that I cannot stay in the canoe. God reminds me that He will keep me here and give me what I need today.

I expect that next year my birthday will be free of crisis. I know that it might not be. It is possible that some circumstance even more distressing than those of recent years is waiting for me there. My hope rests on knowing that God will be there either way.