Losing It: When Life Goes Off Script

My last blog post before finding out I was pregnant with my fifth child was entitled, Why Losing It Could Be The Best Thing That Ever Happened To You.  Be careful what you write in your blog posts.

One week later, after a glorious vacation and a feeling that life was finally becoming manageable, I had that feeling. Sure enough, we were pregnant. 

It isn't that I was not excited about the news.  A huge part of me rejoiced at the advent of new life inside of me.  

It's just that another part of me lost it at the thought of starting all over again.  Pictures of rising grocery bills flashed in my mind and a near panic washed over me.  Having a baby was not on my calendar!  The picture I had created of my immediate future changed in an instant.

As I wrestled with the news during the weeks that I could still hide my pregnancy from family and friends, truth slowly began to seep into my heart.

Eventually, it's as if I could hear God saying,

In all My goodness and love for you, I'm going to let you totally lose it some more, so you can learn to trust me totally.

Proverbs 17:3 states, "The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart."

God is good and it is from His trustworthy character that He tests us.  He wants to reveal what is in our hearts.  Do I meet life with a quiet trust and peace or am I more often frazzled, angry, and anxious?  

Imagine you were trying to grow tomatoes in your backyard but they kept rotting on the vine.  If you were serious about growing delicious tomatoes, you might take your soil to get tested.  The test would reveal what is going on in the soil that is preventing the growth of the tomatoes you desire.  

God often allows circumstances in our lives in order to test us and reveal what is happening in the "soil" of our hearts.  Why?  Because He desires good for us.  He wants us to live fruitful lives and experience His peace that transcends understanding. 

But how do we get to that place of quiet trust and peace?  Unfortunately, it's usually a long, hard road with many "losing it" bumps along the way.  These "tests"--the struggles that tempt me to lose it--are often what God uses to smooth out the rough edges of my character and replace my fear with faith.

But let's be honest.  No one likes tests and losing it doesn't feel good.  Not for the person losing it or for anyone in close proximity.  Our losing it takes many different forms and may be prompted by an untold number of varying circumstances big and small, serious and trivial. These circumstances don't have to qualify as major tragedy to test our hearts.

Take normal family life for example.  No matter how many times life fails to meet my expectations, I am still prone to rise from bed fitted with unrealistic visions of Hallmark movies and scenes from the Pottery Barn Kids catalog flashing in my mind.  When it comes right down to it, I simply don't plan for the imperfect, the difficult, and the messy parts of life.  My feet are on the ground, but all the rest of me is living in the clouds hoping that today will be the day my kids bound down the stairs wearing their angel wings, my husband rides down like Prince Charming on his horse, and I emerge into the kitchen bedazzled like Elsa, having the domestic capabilities of Mary Poppins and the culinary skills and sex appeal of Giada De Laurentiis!

When blustering reality hits, it hurts.  The sting of imperfection, conflict, and my own roaring selfishness tempts me to lose it.

I have lost it in all of the following ways during my ten years of marriage.  I would say most all of these responses have been prompted by a feeling of being out of control in some way or another:  

I've yelled, slammed doors, and intentionally banged dishes into the cabinet.  I've thrown toys across the room in exasperation.  I've given the cold shoulder to my husband.  I've withdrawn from relationships.  I've eaten everything in sight and "vegged out" in front of a screen for hours.  I've worried incessantly and assumed the worst instead of the best.  I've gone on cleaning tirades and steamrolled my children in the process with my tyrannical fits of anger.  I've spewed negativity and criticism onto anyone who dares cross my path.     

Ultimately, I've hurt those I love.  

Just because I have put my trust in Jesus, I am not exempt from losing it.  As much as my redeemed spirit wants Jesus, there is constantly this magnetic pull of my flesh towards selfishness, self-reliance, and sin.  This is the spiritual battle the Bible talks about.  

Jesus Himself put it this way when He found His disciples sleeping in the garden just before He was to be crucified, 

What!  Could you not watch with Me one hour?  Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.  The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.  Matthew 26:40-41

In the weakness of my flesh, I lose it.  I walk out of fellowship with the God who saved me and into agreement with my flesh.

This happened just the other night.  This situation would fall under the "Spew Negativity To Everyone Who Crosses My Path" category.

This particular episode was triggered by cooking a dinner that turned out so bad I gagged and had to run to the bathroom.  What was I doing cooking fish when I am pregnant anyhow?

I'll tell you what I was doing.  I was clearing out the freezer of all the purchased, uneaten food that had been sitting there for months so it would quit taunting me about all that money spent and wasted.  Never mind the freezer burn.  For all our differences, my husband and I have this in common:  neither of us can stand to throw away food.

Just before the moment when I gagged in the bathroom (as discreetly as possible so we would still have a chance of the kids actually eating their food) was a series of normal occurrences that threw me into a fit of rage: 

My 3-yr old came inside from the 40-something degree weather barefoot, wearing only shorts and a t-shirt.  I didn't even know he had escaped to the great outdoors.  Then I discovered the accident in his pants. 

Seconds later my 5-yr old child yelled, "Can you wipe me!" from the upstairs bathroom. 

On the way to tend to that child I stepped on toys that should have been picked up days ago.  Expletive under my breath.  That hurt.  

To top it all off, my oldest two were simultaneously yelling "Stop it!" more times in a minute than even seems humanly possible.  Over what, you ask?  Who the heck knows!

Just the mundane stuff of life.  Not tragedy or major heartache or abuse.  Just life.  The wonderful, beautiful "happily ever after" they tell you about in the movies.   

But what about that anyway?  What about normal life?  

God continues to impress upon my heart that He wants to use all of my normal and all of my mundane in the same way that He desires to use people's major trials and tragedies--for His glory.   

In the post I mentioned above, Why Losing It Could Be The Best Thing That Ever Happened To You, I wrote this: 

I am quick to trust and pray in faith for others when they go through major trials, but I am slow to trust and pray in faith for myself when I struggle through seemingly mundane trials...  

When I hold these situations back from God, I miss an opportunity to have my own faith story, however trivial it may seem.

I want to keep working on giving my daily circumstances to God.  When I say working, I don't mean to imply that I can work my way to God or into His good graces.  This girl is saved by grace alone, through faith alone.  It's just that I can't pick and choose my way through the bible.  

2 Peter 3:14 states, "Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things [new heavens and a new earth], be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless."

Diligent (adj.)--to make effort, endeavor, labor; constant in effort to accomplish something

This verse indicates that as God's children, we are to make serious business of being at peace in Him. We have a part to play.  There is a human response that God's initiating love and forgiveness demands.  What a challenge!

This is why I let Jesus into the closet of my heart to search through the muck and mire.  As we wade through my "issues of life" together, He sanctifies me for His noble purposes.  At the end of the day I want to be found by Him in peace.

So, I apologize.  As hard as it is, as easy as it is to neglect, I dig deep and do it.

I apologize to my family for giving voice to all of my negative thoughts, and I tell my children that mommy was wrong.  

Once again they learn an important spiritual truth:  Mommy is not perfect.

Jenny Allen states in her bible study, Restless,

You will fail your children.  And in the places you fail your children, they will need Jesus. (paraphrased)

As my kids see me needing Jesus, my prayer is that they will grow to admit their need for Jesus and seek His help willingly and often.  

After all, they will have known all along that Mommy and Daddy aren't perfect, and they will innately know deep in their hearts that they aren't perfect either.  I pray they won't run from this fact, but instead embrace their need of forgiveness and find Jesus.  

God is using my fifth pregnancy as a spiritual litmus test of my heart.  What has this unexpected pregnancy revealed in me?

He has shown me that I trust in money more than Him. 

He has shown me my excessive quest for the approval of others in the face of comments such as, "You know how that happens, don't you?"

He has shown me that I'm afraid of sleeplessness and tending to the needs of five children.  

As my body swells again, He has revealed my vanity and misplaced emphasis on my appearance.

He has shown me that I am quick to set out surrendered to Him, but often fail to maintain a surrendered stance concerning my dreams and plans.  

He has shown me that He is serious when He instructs me to say "Lord willing" (James 4:15) regarding my plans because I simply do not know the future.   

So, why does God allow unexpected events into our lives that tempt us to lose it?  I believe it is because He loves us, He wants our lives to bear much fruit, and He desires intimate fellowship with His children.

With this perspective in mind, I'm learning to view the tests of life with a sense of purpose instead of distain.  I'm learning to look up when I lose it and thank God for exposing my true heart.  Once exposed, I can repent and fill it anew with His promises and truly lay hold of the abundant, Sprit-filled life described in the Bible.      

Nearly twenty-three weeks into this pregnancy, I sense God telling me, 

Go ahead and try Me, Melissa.  Taste and see if I am not good and loving and faithful to all My promises.  

When I get to the end of my life, I pray He finds big, luscious tomatoes on this vine.

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"I am the vine; you are the branches.  
If a man remains in Me, and I in him, he will bear much fruit.  
Apart from Me you can do nothing."  

John 15:5

"Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life."
Proverbs 4:23 

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If you are a mom surrounded by little people, I highly recommend the book, Loving the Little Years by Rachel Janchovic.  It has been a constant resource to me over the years.

To all those who have suffered the loss of a child through miscarriage or infant death and to those who have experienced the grief of infertility, I pray the God of all comfort would continually comfort your heart.  Thank you for sharing your stories.  You give us all the much needed gift of perspective.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 
who comforts us in all our tribulation, 
that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, 
with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.  
For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ."
2 Corinthians 1:3-5