I’m having a hard time lately knowing what I can / should expect from God.  There’s the part of me that thinks He should be answering my prayers – that I should see improvements in different areas of life, that His provision should be clearer, that there should be proof that He really is taking care of me.  I think of scripture verses like Luke 11:9, James 1:5, Psalm 84:11, Matthew 17:20, etc. that promise answered prayers, reward for faith, good things for those following after Him.  These passages make me doubt that my faith is where it needs to be; they make me wonder if I’m falling much too far short in my attempts to serve the Lord, and that He is not answering (or I’m not hearing) because of it.  I think it is impossible to escape the necessity of faith in seeing God move in a life or situation…but where does the line get drawn between my responsibility and God’s?

Then there’s  another part of me that thinks maybe I just need to believe that the unanswered prayers, the clouded vision, the spinning wheels are really God’s way of refining me…of somehow narrowing my view of what He should be doing in my life to only include this moment, of removing the extraneous “felt needs” and attempting to convince me that – whether I like it or not – He is truly enough, of disciplining me in some painful ways so that, later on, the harvest will be greater.  Hebrews 12 and Matthew 6:25-34  simultaneously give me hope that God has a purpose that He is working out in my life, and frustrate me because I’m left wondering what, exactly, I can have faith for in daily life.

And still, there’s this last part that wonders if it is all just a part of living in a fallen world.  In John 16:33, Jesus promises that we will have trouble.  In Philippians 4, Paul talks about contentment in every circumstance.  Clearly, life can’t be perfect this side of heaven, and while I sometimes tend to think the “troubles” I encounter should all have a deep spiritual meaning, maybe there are times when it really is just life…maybe God’s sovereignty, while not limited, still allows for my life to be touched by the reality that sin – mine and others –  isn’t without temporal consequence.

I know these aren’t exhaustive thoughts.  I haven’t fully processed all that I really know / believe about this particular topic.  But, I know it isn’t a new struggle.  I know that I waver on what I believe about how God should be at work in my life.  It affects so much about how I view life, the future, my own walk with Christ, my trust in God and His love, and what expectations I should place on myself and Tim as we strive to follow the Lord.  Reality is probably some balance of all those things, and maybe more.  For now, though, I will try to just simplify it all to the belief that  “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” – Romans 8:28.  Somehow, regardless of the “why” to my circumstances, I have this promise that it will all result in good for me.  It’s not an easy lesson, but hopefully, I will learn it eventually.

Right now…

…baby is head up.  I don’t think any of my babies have been head-down by this point, but it is nerve-wracking nonetheless.

…I waddle, even when I try hard not to.  Oh well.

…I have gained 50 lbs.  I don’t know why I ever hoped this pregnancy would be any different in the weight-gain category.

…I am nervous about labor.  The thought of it all happening at home makes me more worried in some ways, and less worried in others.  Really, I’m just trying to boil it all down to trusting in the fact that it is all in God’s hands, anyway.

…I have officially reached what I like to call the “beached whale” phase of pregnancy, where flipping from one side to the other while trying to sleep has become a monumental (and sometimes amusing) venture.

…my kiddos like to feel the baby’s head (since being head-up makes it very easy to locate).

…there’s heartburn.  Fun.

…many of my maternity shirts have become too short.  Thus is the plight of a long-torso-ed (?) pregnant lady.

…my stomach is usually upset throughout the mornings, so I sit a lot.

…my brain continues to be in a fog, so expecting me to remember anything or make sense of anything is a pretty big gamble.

…I sweat if the temperature is above 70 and I am doing anything.  And on really hot days, my body is convinced that I am going to dehydrate, so it hordes water as if I were preparing for a trek across the desert.

…I am debating my need for a new carseat for the baby.  The “official” answer Tim got from the “seatbelt expert” at the State Police was that there is no law concerning carseat expiration and that nobody checks anyway.  My thinking is that I have had the same one for all four kids and would like something different.  I’m just not sure boredom justifies the expense.

…I’m really kind of hoping this baby doesn’t come late.  Of course, hoping doesn’t really affect the actual outcome (or, at least, hasn’t so far).  Still, I get impatient by the end, so I occasionally indulge in wishful thinking.  Practically speaking, though, I should probably be hoping for as much time as possible to get things done before this little one arrives.  It’s possible that pregnancy makes me slightly less practical than usual, though.

And those are my musings with 5 weeks (+ or -) left to go.  While it may not necessarily seem like it, I am so excited to meet this little one.  I am thankful for the inconveniences of pregnancy that remind me of the life that is being formed, and assure me that his or her arrival is drawing ever nearer.  And when this baby is here, and I can’t imagine how we lived life before, most of the pregnancy woes will be, at most, a faded memory – shadowed by the joy of a perfect little life entrusted to us.

No “nesting” here.  No great motivation.  No feelings of accomplishment.  Instead, there is school work getting done in fragments.  A few small jars of refrigerator pickles made.  A few short minutes of dishwashing, trying to make whatever dent I can in the piles (that are not completely overwhelming only because Tim washed many this morning).  A glass of water that doesn’t agree with my stomach, but which I hope will help my headache.  A bunch of veggies and some chicken pretty much thrown into a pan that somehow needs to become something edible for dinner.  A mental note to let an extremely eager 6 year old help in the kitchen.  A quick load of extraneous laundry started.  A tablecloth finally getting put on the table, after a few days of being neatly folded beside it.  Brief online searches for sconces and baby carriers and squash recipes.  Worship music playing to help me try to keep some perspective.  Instructing children in various random tasks to help maintain some kind of order.  Thinking about gifts for my soon-to-be five-year old’s August birthday.  Crying over my inadequacies, but then trying to convince myself that there must be a reason God made me who I am.  Reading Psalm 71 and being reminded of God’s goodness to me.  Fighting back fears and worries about this upcoming labor and delivery.  Reminding myself that He is enough in all of this.

My eyes don’t want to stay open.  My body doesn’t want to let me stand for more than a few minutes without sending waves of nausea and great fatigue.  My brain doesn’t want to let me carry thoughts through to completion.  And, unfortunately, this has been my usual state for several days.  Rather than making huge strides toward getting tasks accomplished before a baby arrives, I am finding daily tasks to be too much for me.  I wonder why.  I get discouraged.  I feel completely inadequate.  I wish I could be a better wife and a better mom.  I try to see God in this, but it’s hard.  I guess life is just hard, sometimes.

It seems I have a long way to go before I fully embrace all that it means to eat fresh, local, organic vegetables.  Namely, by not screaming and crying upon finding small, green worm-like things when cleaning broccoli.  Actually, I found one and went into mild hysterics.  Tim continued the cleaning and chopping process and found four more.  Then, when he was pretty sure he had found them all, said I could inspect to make sure.  I found another one, threw the broccoli piece and ran out of the kitchen again.

Now, to be fair, I have been nauseous all day and vegetables in general have been cause for my stomach to churn…so I wasn’t in the best frame of mind as I was cleaning the broccoli, to begin with.  Plus, the worms (well, actually, upon looking it up, it seems they are moth larvae) are green and blend into the broccoli.  The discovery caused me to be a little petrified that I could have missed them and ended up serving them for dinner.  And I’m pregnant, which of course means that all of my emotional reactions are a little bit extreme at the moment.

But, still, it made me yearn just a little for whatever pesticide-laden, shelf-stable, genetically-engineered broccoli I might find at the supermarket in which I have never yet found little green worms.  I guess some mindsets are hard to break.

Today…

– we were all awakened at 6am by the very loud thunderstorm.  I love thunderstorms.  I don’t like waking up early.  I like it even less when my kids wake up early.

– Tim has a hurting arm/shoulder…some combination of softball and digging and weeding in the garden did not serve him well.  Any movement is causing significant pain, which is highly unusual for him.

– I have a headache (probably thanks to the change in weather) and, consequently, an upset stomach.  Both adults in the house feeling under-the-weather = a very unproductive day.

– Elijah has had several days of really unpleasant diapers.  This probably has something to do with his habit of eating (and drinking) anything he can, including candles, bubbles solution, crayons, dirt, and more.  He also had a couple days of orange pee.  Thanks, Crayola.

– Our house is a mess.  It really is amazing what one day of no housework can cause.

– Someone called wanting to see our camper.  It is the first person to show any interest in the more than two weeks we have had it advertised.  But it only takes one person, right?

– I wasn’t all that excited to get our CSA share today.  Mostly because when my stomach is queasy, raw vegetables are one of the least appealing foods to me.  The return of pregnancy nausea may cause problems for making the most effective use of our garden and CSA vegetables.  That is very disappointing to me.

– Nathanael told me I am the nicest mommy, Bethany made Tim an “I hope you feel better” card, Caedmon did a lot of extra tasks around the house, Elijah was cute and made me smile a lot.  I’m happy they’re mine.

…and that was our day.  I’m thankful there will be new mercies tomorrow.

Sometimes, I feel hopeless.  I question God, and I doubt His Word, and I don’t trust that He will take care of me.  I conclude that my faith is just really, really small – that I don’t truly know Him at all.  For as much as I think I try to seek Him, it seems I keep coming away with a lot of false perceptions.

But, I am realizing that even in my perceptions of how I perceive things I end up giving the enemy a foothold, if I’m not careful.  It’s easy for me to confuse my feelings with my beliefs, and it can be hard to tell the difference sometimes…so I often think that my faith is faltering because I feel abandoned, or I feel doubtful, or I feel any number of other things that would indicate lack of belief.

The truth, though?  When I am faced with the choice of acting on my feelings or acting on what God says is true, my feelings don’t often rule the day.  While I have a definite weakness for saying what I’m feeling and thinking, rather than confessing the truth of the Word (and I recognize my need to fix this), when I have to really put stock in one or the other, I choose God.  Often I worry that I’m wrong, or that I won’t be able to stick with a decision for faith for any length of time, or that God will fail me, but underlying it all is an unwavering conviction that God is all that He says He is, that He does somehow really love me, and that my life is secure in His hands.

But even if I don’t forget that when I am forced into a decision, I do forget it too often in daily life…and it steals away the peace and joy I should have from what my heart knows is true.  And that needs to change.

The past few days, I’ve found myself reading old blog posts from past pregnancies.  I think my hope was to find that I was just as disorganized and exhausted and unmotivated then as I am now.  I didn’t find that, though.  I was able to keep some sort of routine.  I did keep household chores done, and managed to accomplish extra projects, too.  I’m sure it wasn’t every day, but it was certainly more often than, well, never.

And so I am now discouraged and confused and wondering what happened to me.  The reality is that having four kids instead of 2 or 3 isn’t more work.  My kids are self-sufficient enough, and contribute enough to the accomplishment of daily chores that my work-load is less this pregnancy than it has been in the past.  Homeschooling isn’t an excuse at the moment, since I haven’t been any more productive these past several weeks of summer break.  My pregnancy isn’t any worse.  I have been more nauseous recently, but in past pregnancies, it was even more of a constant companion.

What I do know is that productivity seems all but impossible for me when my kids are around.  I can’t focus when there is noise, and a question every 2 minutes, and a soliloquy about something every five minutes…it practically paralyzes me.

What I also know is that this house discourages me.  I can remember, in past pregnancies, a sense of peace when the house was clean.  Not so here.  Even when everything is clean and clutter is cleared, there are still holes in the walls, peeling wallpaper, leaking pipes, slanted floors, stained kitchen tile, and more that make the effort of cleaning seem to have very little point.  I can’t really describe how much those things make me want to not even try.

And I’m left wondering why…why God would be giving me another baby to take care of when I do such a terrible job with the responsibilities that I have now, why we are here in this house that I often hate, why I can’t seem to get organized, why I can’t make myself do better.  I wish I knew the answers.  I wish I knew how to change.

As I sit reading reviews for a history textbook written from a Christian perspective, I am frustrated (for about the bazillionth time) by the need so many Christian authors/activists/etc. feel to exaggerate truth.  It happens when recounting history.  It happens when relaying facts about abortion.  It happens when arguing against socialism.  So often, it seems, we lose sight of the fact that we live in a sin-laden, conscience-calloused world that is not now, nor has ever been, inhabited by righteous, holy, uncorrupted people.

Why taint valid arguments about the role Christianity played in the founding of our nation by twisting truth and attributing false character in order to attempt to augment reality?  Why inflate statistics and presume universal heartache when trying to argue the evils of abortion when the unfortunate, uncomfortable truth is that there are some who can experience abortion first-hand and never suffer the ill-effects of it?…not because it is right, but because they have bought into whatever lies the god of this world has peddled to them.  Why blindly ignore the sometimes real, tangible “good” points of an opposing argument, while at the same time overstating (or outright lying about) the good points of “Christian” perspective, if your hope is to present Truth?

We live in a fallen world.  People need Jesus.  Without Him, many of the conventions and institutions and philosophies that surround us can be truly appealing…and being presented with half-baked religious arguments and fabricated “facts” can be offensive to others and contrary to everything we are to stand for as Christians.  Moreover, as a Christian, I absolutely do not want to falsely indoctrinate my children so that they are left without a clear, well-informed grasp on how Christianity has impacted history and how it should be appropriately applied to the issues that face the world in which we live.

We don’t need to be afraid of reality.  This world is imperfect.  People are imperfect.  God is still bigger.  He doesn’t need for us to try to make Him better than He is.  It’s impossible and Christians end up looking like fools.