A Hopeful Surrender

Monday.

This day that brings a new start; a new week. Why does it betray me on the regular?

The weekends are full – sometimes precious, sometimes hurt-filled and disappointing, but always tiring. And then here it is a new morning and I feel like I’m starting a fire against damp, weak wood. I’m out before I’ve ever started. I don’t even have the energy to even fake it and somehow, the hours leading up to 9:00am are chalked-up full of the classic one-two punch – sometimes literally.

One child has a cold, drama, and undone homework.

One is having trouble breathing and can’t find inhaler, glasses, or gym shoes (which turn out to be wet and muddy when found).

And one has a headache which leads to a vicious unraveling – a spewing of anger and frustration on everyone in the house.

Between thinking about a healthy breakfast, trying to care about lunches, drying shoes, finding glasses, and hostage-negotiating the bald headache victim, I can’t find my own breath; my own pace. I can’t even hear myself think.

These hours are full of reaction, not planned pro-action and I feel my senses filling up with overwhelm.

Why me? Why now? Why is it always this way? What am I doing wrong that the wheels not only fall of the wagon, but seem to be forever lost? 

How do I fan a flame for life and diligence when the day feels ruined before it’s hardly started?

I find myself searching like the drowning. Where is the salvation that will allow my head to stay up and breath through just one more day. One more moment…

I heard it yesterday on the radio and my mind flashes back in a rare moment of clarity:

“The Word of the Lord endures forever.”

I have nothing. He is everything. 

My moments will pass like breath. (why did I think they’d do anything else?) He is forever.

I don’t have to fight for strength because in my weakness, He is strong.

So, as I stand in the middle of a day hardly begun and already shattered, I find hope and strength – not in the picking up of the stressful pieces, but rather in the act of LAYING THEM DOWN.

Choosing a hopeful surrender…

Moment by moment.

The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    but the word of our God endures forever.

Isaiah 40:8, NIV