Laughing at Monday

Here we go again, a new week is upon us. For me, that means driving my kids to school, doctor visits, and gymnastics. It means more laundry, more dishes, more cooking and cleaning and therapy and reading my Bible. It means finding time to be alone with my favorite guy- all the while trying to find time to sleep. When I look at it all,  I begin to feel suffocated, panicky, claustrophobic. Suddenly, I am scanning my life for an exit. I’m not suicidal, I’m just overwhelmed and I know I’m not the only one. What is on your calendar? Your To Do list? What is overwhelming you right now?

A lot of my therapy sessions revolve around the idea that life is hard, but God is good. Bad things happen, they happened to me, they will continue to happen until Glory is fully realized. But God is good. He is looking out for me. He isn’t going to make me walk through life alone. He is there. Nothing I do or say is going to surprise Him. He knows me more than I know myself. He knows that I’m not as strong as I think am. He knows I fail, a lot, like a lot a lot, at life. He knows the depth of my sin as equally as the depth of my pain, my love, my joy.

He knows where my heart is, how much I love my family and how often I sin against them. He hears the mumbling beneath my breath, He sees my raised eyebrows, He knows that frustration bubbling up in me. God knows it all and He still delights in me. It’s crazy, isn’t it? He is the only one who can see us in all our sinfulness, our failure, face down in the mud and fighting to stay there, God sees us there and loves us. He doesn’t love our sin, of course, He can’t love our sin because sin is the very thing separating us from Him. Sin is killing us, it hurts us and rips away His beautiful image off our bodies, sin hides God from our eyes and hardens our hearts to His love. He hates our sin because He loves us. My bible, my church, my husband and my counselor are all working together to remind me of this truth: the God of Israel has always and always will love me.

God has never failed or abandoned me, not once. And even when I felt He had, later, with grace and mercy, He revealed His good plans — plans that have always made any of my suffering beyond worth it. His plans have made me trust Him with my life, the lives of my children, my husband, my friends, and family. To Him, they have all been entrusted.

And so, you see, as the week rushes at me and I’m gasping for breath in the midst of the storm, God gives me strength to be courageous, to be unafraid. I’m no old school noble man’s wife. I don’t purchase property or sew fine linens. But God gives me the same strength that He gives all His people. So I can aspire to be that woman in Proverbs. The one whose “Strength and dignity are her clothing”, the one who “laughs at the days to come.” (31:25). I can ask God to protect me from fear, ask Him to provide strength and graciousness and I can brace myself, my head held high, staring Monday right in the eye and then I can laugh.