"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” -Joshua 1:9
"Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand." -Isaiah 41:10
Being brave and having courage is not very easy right now. I haven't had much time to write out the things that have been going on in our family but it has been a fairly difficult year.
Ezra our sweet little guy has had lots of issues. We have struggled through FTT (failure to thrive), lip and tongue tie, hospital stay do to lack of nutrition and FTT, formula problems, RSV, Developmental Delays and a hospital stay to combat dehydration due to a stomach bug. We have been at the doctors office constantly. We have seen a GI and Neurologist. We have been evaluated by ECI (early childhood intervention) and receive services for PT (physical therapy), OT (occupational therapy) and SST (special skills therapy). When we are not keeping appointments we are checking on insurance, making endless calls to schedule this or that, working on the tasks set by all the therapists and trying to just make it through the day, oh and I have 3 other children.
It's been pretty rough. I get discouraged. I wonder and hope that Ezra will overcome these delays. I pray and beg that we would be past this already. I slip into that mental place where I blame myself and feel crushing guilt because surely there must be a cause for all of this and maybe if I figure it out we can get over it. I get frustrated and think I don't deserve this and I did so much right during my pregnancy and other people have 4 kids and don't have these issue, why me? My thoughts are sometimes very very dark. But I won't stray there in this blog (for those thoughts are trash) - I already did with a very good friend and the ladies of my missional community and they listened and encouraged and prayed and we brought it into the light - and I will continue to "demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
The thing is it is easy to go to the dark places and easy to stay there but we don't have to. Jesus is the good news calls us into the light. The truth is God is worthy of my trust and I do not deserve anything (other than death - thank God that Jesus carried that which I deserved and died in my place). I have so much to thank God for and when I thank him I combat much of the darkness. He gives hope. He makes me brave enough to face the next day, the next hour, the next minute, the next breath.
Where we are now with Ezra is this: Ezra is 16 months old. He will sit for about 5 min on his own. He is getting stronger and has begun to army crawl. He is making progress in his oral development and is eating more food. He has started to babble a bit. But we need prayer. Ezra needs help, he needs healing. Ezra needs his therapies (which have been lacking) and this tired momma needs the Spirit of God inside me to see me through.
I place my hope in Jesus and to some that is folly and to some it would be easy to despair but in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien,
“Despair, or folly?' said Gandalf. 'It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy!
'At least for a while,' said Elrond. 'The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong.
Jesus is not false hope and in his strength I will walk forward facing the challenges Ezra has.
p.s. - can you tell I read LOTR in the last year?
p.s.s. - I can't figure out what I did to make the text appear in different sizes nor does anything I try fix it. So live with it. And my poor grammar.
p.s.s.s. - I think I fixed it. The way the text appears. My grammar can't be fixed. Like ever.
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