I Don't Know - Part 1

A friend asked me a few days ago, why I never had more children. There was really no short answer. Especially since my friend has only known me for a couple of years. Had he known me longer, perhaps the question would never had been asked.

I remember the day, like most others, I went to get out of bed.

Everything on fire, and the pain so intense tears ripped down my cheeks.

"Oh no." I thought, "not again! I HAVE to work, I HAVE TOO!"
"I can't, I just can't, the pain, it's too much,"

I worked myself into a sitting position, breathing deeply to focus on anything but the throbbing. Now having psyched myself up, I think,

"It's been worse, pull it together and just get over it."

Propelling my body off the bed, I try and keep my equilibrium until I straighten up. It would have worked too, had my right leg not been numb from the knee down.

My prayers were at that time, pretty basic. No very conversational, because it seemed to be of no use. So I prayed for at least one of the many medicines I took to work. I didn't beg for a cure, I had given up on that. What was left of my faith was in a pill. I just wanted the pain to be tolerable. The swelling to go away. The tears to end. I wanted what they would call a 'normal' life. Please God, just let me feel like living.

It was kind of a pattern of thinking for me since I was a small child.

You know, the prayer starts with a desperate sob, urgent and begging "Please, Please, Make it stop. HELP ME!"

But when it doesn't stop, the next prayer is just a little different isn't it? My faith... altered, more unsure.

"please, please, let me not feel it, let it not hurt."

It did.

The next prayer even more negotiating.

"Let it be short.".

It turns it to a bargaining doesn't it?

So this altered faith, goes on and on, patterned over and over into new circumstances, but the same questions. Is he listening? Does he love me? Why doesn't he answer!? What is real faith? If I had more, would he give me the answer? And there it goes again. Trying to bargain with God. At least it felt like something I could do. Otherwise the feeling of helplessness from lack of answers was too overwhelming.

I had someone tell me one time, after I had been trying to almost three years to have a baby, "As soon as you give up, really give up, it will happen." I can't tell you how stupid those words sounded. Funny how now they makes sense, and not just because I gave up, and had a daughter.

It is amazing how much I think I know. The wealth of acquired knowledge swimming around in my head that I think that if other people could possess it would change their lives. What if they could see what I see, just understand! When those words are written down is sounds so very pathetic, and laughable, doesn't it? All the real answers I still am trying to grasp.

It is embarrassing to say, "I don't know."

"I don't know"

I find myself saying this more and more every day. I truly feel I have had more questions answered by my Father in the last three years then the previous 35 and yet I know even less then I began. Maybe because his answers have been so simple, and I wanted them to be complex. Maybe because he is still waiting for me to really give up, so that I can hear him, instead of my own answers, and then the answer will feel complete. Or maybe I will spend my life asking him more questions, as he patiently waits for me to accept the first one. I don't know.

Simple Answers.

Is he listening?

"Yes"

This of course leads to another!

Do you love me?

"Yes, I loved you first."

Oh how this opens to all the other questions, and especially the next one which feels the most desperate:

Why!!???

His answer to that one, I guess that leads to "I don't know" part 2.