Dust to Dust

It kind of feels like for the first time in five years, the dust has settled in our life.

For so long, it’s all I’ve ever known: the hustle and bustle of birthing babies and leaps of faith and raising boys. Something was always changing, whether it was the size of my belly or the clients my husband worked for. Now those things have almost stayed the same.

I feel anxious in this, as though now is the time where I can wipe off the dust after letting it accumulate and take a good, long look at this place we have here. At this woman in the mirror. At the boys I have around my feet who don’t resemble toddlers much anymore. At my husband’s work that has grown and changed exponentially in the past year. At my writing. At God’s workmanship.

Over the weekend was Mother’s Day, and I got to celebrate it fully with our family and with so much gratefulness in my heart. I find myself thinking quite often, “How in the world did I get this lucky?” as though luck had anything to do with it.

Motherhood is challenging all day, every day, and sometimes it feels like a joke to say that I was chosen for these kids. These kids, the ones who poop their pants, spill three cups of water on the floor a day, make me cry, and give me a run for my money all the time. But God hasn’t ever made a mistake, not once in history. I cannot question Him now.

Here we are, in this moment where I can look around and feel like the ground isn’t so far away anymore. As though the sky has a brighter sun or the dust isn’t so clouding, I can see a glimpse of eternity here on earth. Every time my son grabs my hand, gives me a kiss, makes a silly face, or cries in my arms, it’s as though heaven is opening up just a little bit more.

Motherhood is hard, in that some days, my humanness, my weaknesses, and my sin destroy the purity in my love for them. But God meets me there. I couldn’t see Him so well when the dust was thick and moving in the wind. Like on the days of a newborn baby with new needs, a teething baby, or a defiant two-year-old. The days when I sink low to my knees and feel the weight of this all being too much, the dust was thick. I couldn’t find God. I couldn’t hear Him or feel Him near. But just because I couldn’t see Him doesn’t mean He didn’t lift me up and carry me the rest of the way. If anything, I know there have been days where it was only by His strength that I was a mother at all.

In this, I know that even as the dust settles a little today, a new wind storm will come through soon enough to shake up my vision. It may not be the same as in the days of the past, but it will bring with it the new trials of visored eyes and reaching for something within arms reach, even if I can’t see it.

This is faith:  being a mother on the hardest days, and believing that the next day will still come. A new beginning will arise. The dust will not define my endurance. Only a gracious God will.

I’m letting this be enough:  I do not need to know in order to be enough.

To be enough is to let the Father meet me wherever I cannot seem to go on. To be enough is to believe He is what makes me whole, enough, and qualified. All I need is the Knower of all things. Dust or storms, nothing is out of reach when He is near.