Follow hard after

Last night, my darling sister Jenessa spent the night with us. Gideon and I spent the day at my parents’ house, and when we went to pick Mark up from work (one car family…) I started feeling VERY sick. My “morning sickness” this pregnancy is really more of “evening - right when I need to start making dinner and Gideon is having fussy time – sickness” so it wasn’t really anything new, but this particular wave of nausea came on really bad, with pounding headache, dizziness, and all over achiness. Joy and Jenessa were trying to convince us to sleep over so I could sleep and they could help take care of Gideon (I have the greatest family ever!) and Mark thought that was a fantastic idea, because he had to work very early in the morning and said that he would have peace of mind knowing that if I woke up feeling this way, someone would be there to help with Gideon. This has happened before, we’ll sleep over at my parents house (I know, I’m a baby) and I’ll rest, and Gideon will have a blast hangin’ with the cool people. But this time I had this overwhelming sense of failure, this voice inside me shouting “no, I’m fine, I can do it! I’ll put Gideon to bed, I’ll get up with him; I’ll take care of things. I’ll do what I’m supposed to do. Mark just thinks I CAN’T do it, that’s why he wants help for me. How am I supposed to have more kinds if I can’t even handle one inside and one outside of the womb! What about when I have TWO outside of the womb! I am a failure!” I didn’t voice this to Mark, and casually hinted that I’d like to go home, the decision was made without me and I had strict orders, Nessa was coming home with us, and she was getting up with Gideon in the morning. I was to sleep in, and that’s final! (I know, what a tyrant) :-)

When we got home, I had this urge to clean frantically; I was practically running around the house, putting stuff away, moving dishes around, straightening pillows, washing counters. At this point Mark and Nessa realized there was something deeper going on in my heart, than what was going on in my body. Mark sat there with pleading in his eyes for me to sit down, and Nessa came beside me, and started cleaning, she said “will you sit down?” “No,” I said “if I do, I’ll start crying, and I don’t want to start crying, ‘cause who knows when I’ll stop.” “Okay” was the wise beyond years response from her.

Once I sat, out of sheer exhaustion and aching knees, I did start crying, it wasn’t a lot, just a few tears. I sat down with the computer hoping that I could find something else to think about, and it worked, momentarily. (FYI, don’t try to find out the meaning behind the nursery rhyme “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold…” without a parental block on your computer, it’s not pretty!) But, when it came time to go to bed, I laid there, thinking about everything once again. However, this time, the enemy allotted a new spin on the failure theme, “This poor pre-born baby, don’t you remember how much time you prayed for Gideon when he was in the womb, you thought about him all day, you read scripture over him, better get on with that with this one, or…” and I’m not even going to ramble about the stupid things Satan tried to get me to believe about this baby. God spoke to me in the midst of this, He said, “look at where you came from, your mom is not wonder woman, she just follows hard after me. That’s all I ask of you, you had 5 siblings, none of you were neglected, things fell apart now and then, and you know from experience that it’s okay. The main thing you need to do is follow hard after Me. Everything else will fall in place, you will receive life from reading my Word, you will gain wisdom and intimacy by talking with me, you will have PEACE is knowing me more.”

I feel so silly when God has to show me this once again, because I’ve walked this road, and I’ve learned this same lesson in high school when I felt distracted, at work when I felt stressed and hopeless, in courtship, when I felt tempted, in engagement when I felt whatever craziness was in engagement, in marriage when I felt unfulfilled, in motherhood when I felt unqualified, distracted and alone. Follow hard after God, that’s all I need to do. For everything that I struggle with, forgiveness, being judgmental, loneliness, fear of failure, bitterness… will really be addressed and taken care of when I follow hard after God. Maybe this is something other moms and wives need to be reminded of, maybe it’s just something I easily forget, and the rest of the world still knows. I’m thankful though, that God is so faithful, faithful to remind me to follow hard after him, faithful to remind me of the same thing for over and over and over and over…

John 10:27; My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.

P.S. I know I got the “Follow hard” thing from somewhere, be it a book, song or preaching… I can’t seem to actually find it in the Bible, though I believe it to be a biblically sound thing, and even if it doesn’t make much sense, my soul know what it means, and I fully comprehend what it entails.