Today was a blur.  It was starting school day and the start of two weeks of a no-sugar-added diet.  But it was a mess because of me.  Because of a headache and tears and exhaustion and dizziness and disorganization and the inability to get anything right.  I couldn’t think straight and I had no patience and nothing was going the way I needed it to go.

But I woke up with a song in my head, over and over reminding me that His grace covers me.  And as I staggered under the weight of my brokenness, I heard that still small voice whisper…everyone’s broken…and  I found some relief in knowing that it’s not just me that can’t be perfect without Him.  And as I wondered at this day and these days that seem so barren – fruitless and hopeless and hard – I read, again, about how He makes my feet like hind’s feet and makes me walk high places.  Places that require agility and strength and skill…things that don’t come from walking the verdant valleys of level ground and ready provision. These reminders swirled in the dense fog of my day and never really settled my anxious heart, but they were there.  God was there.  Sometimes He shows up when I don’t even realize how much I need Him to, and proves that He still knows my heart.

Nathanael is seven.  So, here are seven things about our Bug.

1.  He loves color.  LOVES color.  He always has.  The more color anything has, the better.

2.  He likes to sing in the shower.  In front of people, though?  Not so much.

3.  He is a thoughtful child.  I know I’ve said this before, but it’s worth saying again.  He will take the burnt toast, or give up the best seat, or offer to help fold laundry…just because he wants to prefer someone else.  Takes after his Daddy, I guess.

4.  He jumps at the chance to help with any project.  He listens well and sticks with it, too.  He doesn’t mind bumps and bruises, or getting dirty, either.

5.  He had a blast playing baseball this year.  There’s definitely a lot of room for improvement, but his heart was in the game.  It was so fun to see his excitement when he hit the ball or made a good play.

6.  He is a voracious reader.  He loves.to.read.  To the point that we’ve several times found him sitting with a book when there were other tasks he was supposed to be doing.  He makes library runs every few days to get new books.  He will tell anyone who will listen about what he has just read.  I hope he keeps it up.

7.  He is very detailed, and is really skilled at noticing details.  When one of the other kids can’t find something, we send Nathanael to go look…and he often is successful.  When he draws a picture, he includes detail that would probably go unnoticed by many people.  He is aware of changes in his surroundings, no matter how seemingly insignificant.

And that’s our Bug…or, at least, some of the things that make him unique and special.  He is such a great kid and we love him.  We are so proud to have him for a son, and to be celebrating his seven years, today.  Happy Birthday, Nathanael!

I don’t know how to do this.

My two littlest girls are under the weather and have spent a good part of the past few days just crying.

My husband is discouraged and overwhelmed.  I can’t blame him.  Life around here has been discouraging and overwhelming for a while, and he carries most of the weight of it on his shoulders.  He has nobody to teach him or show him how to do it.  I don’t know what to say.  I don’t know what to do.  I pray, but it honestly is out of desperation more than faith.  We are alone and breaking under the strain of a thousand little and not little things.

School is starting for us next week and I am lost.  I have books, but no schedule, no goals, no confidence.  I know my kids are smart, but I also know I am lazy and disorganized, and as much as I put my best effort in, I never seem capable of accomplishing anything more than the absolute minimum…and, sometimes, I’m convinced I haven’t even managed that.  It’s to the point of wondering at times if I just need to give up on homeschooling altogether.  ‘Cause I’m just not good enough.

I’m tired.  My back hurts when I try sleeping, all night long.  I’m pretty sure it’s a post-partum issue, but knowing that doesn’t make it easier to deal with. 

I still can’t see, or hear, or manage to trust God.  It makes my heart hurt, pretty much continually.  I’m trying.  I’m honestly trying.  But I feel hopeless.

Isabelle is three months old today.  No longer a “newborn” in most regards.

It always takes my breath away, how quickly those days pass.

There are normal baby things I can comment on.  She is mostly sleeping through the night, and has been for a few weeks.  She likes to suck on her fist.  She loves to sit facing outward, to be a part of whatever is going on around her.  She gets cranky in the evenings, but is usually fast asleep before 10pm.  She is growing fast, though in typical Ruehle fashion, has very little baby chubbiness to her.  We still can’t figure our her eye color, so for now we say they are “dark”.  And in all of these things, we are so happy to watch this newest of our precious children begin to express her particular proclivities.

Beyond her milestones and mannerisms, though, is a heart unique to Isabelle.  She is the first of our children to stop nursing for the sole purpose of staring up at me with the biggest of smiles spread across her face.  Often, in her fussy moments, she is calmed simply by anyone smiling at her…and she responds in those moments with seemingly endless smiles and laughter of her own.  It’s not just that she’s entertained, either.  Though she clearly finds many things captivating, her smiles are almost always reserved for people.  I don’t know how much intentionality I can ascribe to her at three months old, but I feel certain that there is a love pouring out of my little girl that is remarkable.    I’m sure I’m biased…I can’t pretend to not be…but tears come to my eyes from the way she looks at me.  It’s like she is baring her heart for all to see and doesn’t know yet to be afraid or skeptical about how it will be received.  She just loves.  And that is absolutely beautiful.

Today…well, really, I think for months…God has been telling me I need to believe Him.  The two passages I read this morning (Romans 4 and James 2) both referenced Genesis 15:6

And [Abraham] believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.

As is the case with most truth that God tries to get me to see, it’s not a new idea.  In fact, I probably would have glossed over it if it hadn’t shown up twice.  Even then, I didn’t really want to think about it.  I didn’t want to think it could be relevant to my life at this moment.  See, I have been prone to arguing with God lately about this topic.  I have staunchly – stubbornly – been refusing to accept that I need to believe that what God says is true when I can’t see it.  I’ve been asking to see Him.  Desperately.  Persistently.  In frustration and confusion I have wondered why.  I didn’t like the answer that kept coming:

Believe when you can’t see.

So, I’ve been ignoring and arguing.  I was all set to do the same this morning and wanted to somehow think God had already been showing up in Abraham’s situation, but I sort of accidentally paid attention the circumstances of Abraham’s believing.  God made a promise of an heir when, by all accounts, Sarah was well past her child-bearing years.  God had had years to provide a son – to have proven himself faithful – and He hadn’t.  But still, Abraham believed Him when He promised what not only seemed impossible because of the current situation, but which contradicted a lifetime of experience that said it couldn’t happen.  He believed when he couldn’t see.

It’s easy to think I know best.  It’s easy to question God’s timing, and how He chooses to be faithful to His Word.  It’s hard to not see.  It’s hard to wait, especially in a desert.  It’s hard (for me anyway) to call something true and right and God-glorifying that, in the moment, is only pain and struggle.

I rely too much on sight, on logic, on what I feel.  But if God is who He claims to be, then He is in no way constrained by circumstances, reason, or emotion.  They are constructs of His limitless being and He can’t, in any way, be limited by them.

I want to trust that.  I want to believe when I can’t see.  I’m not sure how to get there, though.

A couple days ago, there was some roadwork being done in front of our house.  Men were shoveling gravel into a dumptruck, and it brought a thought to mind that I find myself having a lot.  It’s a thought I have when driving through mountains and seeing the strips of land cleared across nearly impossible terrain in order to run power lines.  Or when I watch little league or men’s softball games.  Or when I see a man walking on a roof, or see photos of the construction of skyscrapers and massive bridges.  It’s a thought I have over and over and over again just observing how my husband lives life:  men are so much stronger than women in so many ways.

Up until I was about ten or eleven, I think I mostly bought into the notion that our culture had so blatantly tried to instill in me that boys and girls were equal – the same in strength, and ability and intelligence.  I had so far always been among the smartest, fastest and strongest of my peers.  My biceps were the biggest in my fourth grade class (uh, can we say tomboy?).  I thought I would always be as good at anything and everything as the boys.  Somehow, though, by the age of twelve, I remember having come to a very matter-of-fact understanding that, as a girl, I just wasn’t cut out of the same cloth as the boys.  Despite all of the indoctrination (which I got a good dose of at home as well as at school), I knew…I think because it was just obvious…that boys were actually better at a lot of things, in many cases simply because they were boys – and even then, found comfort in that reality.

Now, as I consider all the things that men can do that I can’t do – that, in general, women can’t do – I find God’s design so humbling and so amazing.  Honestly, the fact that anybody dreamed that they could criss-cross mountain ranges with huge power towers and electric lines is mind boggling to me.  There is so much wrapped up in that – vision and courage and intelligence and physical endurance and persistence – that I truly think is part of a man’s God-given nature.  And though not every endeavor that a man undertakes is so monumental, those traits are valuable and necessary in so many of the demands of everyday life.

When my husband talks of dreams for the future, it’s not unusual for me to cringe and want to point out all of things that won’t work the way he hopes they will.  The weight of the idea alone is enough to crush my spirit, to make me want to cling to the safety of the known, humdrum, easy(er) work of life.  I admit, I am not always (or even often) an encouragement in those moments.  But I’ve felt challenged lately – challenged to recognize that there’s a reason he’s the leader and I’m not.  The call on his life requires a particular strength of will, strength of character, strength of faith that are just not a part of who I was made to be.  There’s a necessity for me to support even when my comprehension is limited.

I’m also becoming increasingly aware of how this affects the way we raise our boys.  As I’ve sat at baseball games just really floored by the fact that pre-teen boys are already capable of things, strength-wise, that I’ve never been able to do, I’ve realized even more that I need to learn to restrain my natural inclinations toward being over-protective and risk-averse and “practical” when it comes to how they approach life.  I want my boys to dream big.  I want them to recognize that God has made them to be visionary and faith-filled and persistent and tenacious and courageous and faithful.  But can I just say that this scares me more than a little?  God, grant me the wisdom and faith to trust them in your hands.

…

We live in a society that doesn’t value men.  We are surrounded by a culture that has chosen to marginalize the very characteristics in men that uniquely qualify them to protect and lead and provide and, in some very meaningful ways, reflect the nature of an all-powerful, but always good God.  I have seen so clearly and personally how effectively the Devil can destroy a man by undermining those qualities.  And, it seems, in each generation in recent history, that undermining is taken to deeper and deeper levels.

How crucial it is, then, for me to encourage my husband to walk in all that he is as a man of God – to support him in prayer, in my words, in whatever way I can as his helper – not just so that our family can move forward in God’s plan for us, but so that an unbelieving world can look on and see how good and right and necessary it is to let men be men.  And how imperative it is that my boys know that they have a calling as men in the Lord, regardless of whatever else they are called to, and that they can recognize that there’s something special in that.  There’s a responsibility, but there’s also an opportunity to impact their family, their community, their nation and the world, for the kingdom of God…simply by wisely and faithfully exercising those strengths they’ve been given.

I am so thankful for godly men who walk worthy of their calling.  It strengthens families and builds churches.  It is salt and light in our ever more decaying and dark world.  It testifies to the wisdom of God’s design.  It bears fruit for His kingdom.

I can’t say emphatically enough how much this means to me, personally, and to our world.

It matters.  So, so much.