I wasn't going to allow faith to become a focal point on this blog, but it seems inevitable. Those who do have faith would say that I don't have enough, those who don't have faith would ask me why God is not returning my mother's money so we can go on with our lives.Both would be valid comments.
I don't have the strength to go through this. I am so weakened, so emotionally, physically, mentally exhausted that I don't want to wake up each morning and I can't pretend otherwise. Each day a friend, yet another victim of Robert Huckins, tells me, "You have to keep going, you have to keep trying" and each day my response is, "I can't do this anymore - I am so tired."
But each day I do keep trying. I phone and write to mobile home/modular companies looking for anything that can be renovated. I phone the DA's office seeking any end to these court trials. I post ad's seeking an owner-finances mobile home/modular, watching the calendar change from March, to April, then May to June, and June slip away, knowing that I must try to be in a home before the cold weather arrives . Knowing that my chances of ever seeing my mother alive is slipping away with each passing month.
I may have done it a thousand times before over a three year period, but I do it all over again, an exercise of frustration borne from necessity.
If I could say that I "count it all as joy" I would be lying - bold faced lying. Yet I know, without a shadow of doubt, that I could not go through this under my own strength. For I have none left. God is now carrying me.
After the Haiti earthquake I quickly signed up as a volunteer and started rummaging through packed boxes looking for my passport. I so wanted to get away from my own seemingly insurmountable problems and try to help in ways I could help. I needed to lose "self" in "service." I needed to run away.
Anger is an emotion I cannot handle. I will get away, and stay a distance, from anyone who is an angry person, the type of a person who "looks" for something to be angry about. But when Dorothy McKeever died, for the very first time I felt and exhibited deep down anger. I was furious that this poor woman had been put through living hell for years before she died. And when I approached the court I did so first asking Judge Ritter if I could speak on behalf of Dorothy. It was so important that her silenced voice be heard.
Yet deep seated bitterness, or anger, don't seem characteristics that can play a part in this situation. I am lost, confused, frustrated, lonely, alone and sometimes disgusted with the courts and our judicial system. I question a lot. A myriad of emotions but bitterness and anger never become a permanent fixture no matter how roller coaster it may become.
Sometimes I go outside late at night and look at the light shining from the houses around me and I wonder if any of those residents know what it's like to be out in 25 or 30 degree weather day after day. When you become so cold you can no longer find a way to get warm. Or when the worries are pressing around you and you can't find a resolve, your life & family is being torn asunder and there seems to be nothing you can do to stop it.
But then I look at the cross and how God gave us His grace, and I am humbled & grateful.
As a Christian I may have fallen pitifully short of the mark, and won't even deny that reality. Yet I know that the only strength I have is Christ's, and when I hear people say that Christians are weak willed I have to respond, "THANK GOD!"
So to keep me from being too elated by the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10 ESV)
