Day 24

Today turned out to be much more eventful than I imagined. First, sweet baby Son woke up with a fever of 102. We dropped off Daughter at preschool, and then we stayed home for a morning of sad fussing and sweet cuddling. If you aren't a parent, you will think this sounds awful but as much as I hate it when my kids are sick, I secretly treasure the time they want to spend wrapped up in my arms. Most days they are simply too busy for that. I wonder if that's how God feels about us. He hates seeing us in painful circumstances, but He loves the closeness it often brings to our relationship because we are too desperate to go it alone.

So the late afternoon entailed a very long, arduous trip to the doctor, and a diagnosis that my precious boy is pretty sick. Somewhere amid dragging him to the medical supply store and getting instructions on giving breathing treatments, the lawyer's office finally called. They said that I have a court date! For tomorrow morning, in fact. I'll go in at 8:30 to finalize the divorce, and then that part will be behind us. Thank you for your prayers thus far, and knowing that I will be showered with them as I go about the proceedings tomorrow is more encouraging than you know. Which brings me to the lesson of the day.

TIME WILL KEEP PASSING, AND YOU WILL KEEP HEALING.
I remember so vividly how the first couple of months of my separation passed so slowly it was excruciating. I was simply trying to survive the time between rolling out of bed in the morning and crawling back in to it at night. The days felt like years, and I couldn't imagine how I could go on much longer.

I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere in the past several weeks the pace started to pick up a little. There are still certainly days, events and moments when it feels like I'm living in a version of The Never Ending Story, but routines have started to form out of the chaos. And comfort has become a concept I can occasionally see again in the present tense. And the leaves are changing, the wind is blowing, and life is going on.

"I am no longer sorry that I sent that letter to you, though I was sorry for a time, for I know that it was painful to you for a little while. Now I am glad I sent it, not because it hurt you, but because the pain caused you to have remorse and change your ways. It was the kind of sorrow God wants his people to have, so you were not harmed by us in any way. For God can use sorrow in our lives to help us turn away from sin and seek salvation. We will never regret that kind of sorrow. But sorrow without repentance is the kind that results in death. Just see what this godly sorrow produced in you! Such earnestness, such concern to clear yourselves, such indignation, such alarm, such longing to see me, such zeal, and such a readiness to punish the wrongdoer. You showed that you have done everything you could to make things right." 2 Cor. 8-11
--Paul said this to the church at Corinth after he sent a letter rebuking them for the wrongs in their lives. I believe that God looks at my life and says essentially the same thing. He's sorry that He had to allow this to happen to me, but the pain, the sorrow and the anguish will be short lived. He is using those things to produce qualities in me that can point others toward salvation, and that will make my joy in Him complete. So as I step out of that courthouse tomorrow, my story will not end. This is the part God wrote in to bring about a change in me that will make mine a story worth telling.