I had just dropped my preteen son off at his new school, walked into an empty house and started the ugly cry. The morning had been a wash. He was crying, I was crying, and all my #momgoals went completely out the window. My heart was overwhelmed. I wanted to throw in the towel and go home. Except I was home. It just didn’t feel like it anymore.
I had just given away everything I own, quit my job, sold our house, and moved our family 2,500 miles away. I said goodbye to lifelong friends and family, hugged my best friend two doors down, (oh how badly I would miss those early morning coffees dates and late-night chats on the porch), and packed whatever I had left in an 8×8 shipping container.
I filled the car with as many personal belongings as I could safely or unsafely cram in there and hit the road—but not before my daughter broke out with a fever and large blisters. Seriously—could hand foot and mouth disease not find a more convenient time to infect my child?!
After driving 13 hours a day, using 1-star gas station restrooms and staying in the world’s dingiest hotels, we finally made it “home,” and I was praying the house we rented would live up to the photos we had seen online.
Did I mention that my husband had to stay back for a week, I had no furniture, no US bank accounts, no friends, and I forgot to hook up the gas? Yeah, the week had been a lot.
Before Moving, We’d Prayed About Every Detail
Finding things in a new grocery store was time consuming, maneuvering my way through awkward school yard pickups was stressful. Trying to make friends was like a one-way ticket back to middle school, and I was suddenly an insecure and awkward 13-year-old girl in a sea of cool kids. Do I look OK? Are they judging me? Will we be friends??
Never knowing if my Canadian bank cards would work at the grocery store was fun. It was Russian roulette and a 50% chance my card would get declined and I would want to crawl into a dark hole and die, while internally screaming “I can afford these groceries, Karen!”
Watching My Kids Hurt Broke My Heart
All of it was hard, but to be honest, I managed. But nothing prepared me for how hard it would be to watch my once happy and thriving children be angry, confused, and suffer. I would give anything to take their pain away.
Our family was the epitome of community back home. We had friends from every walk of life, and my kids had no shortage of community surrounding them. They were happy. They excelled at church, sports, and school, and it never fully occurred to me just how hard the transition would be on them. Watching them try to adjust to a new place and go through all the emotions wrecked me.
The tears and the frustration of being in a new school and new sports teams and trying to make new friends was heavy. They were angry and hurt that we would choose to do this. They didn’t ask for this, and they couldn’t understand why we had to move. As children, their entire lives had been uprooted and it didn’t make sense. The tears first thing in the morning because school was no longer a place they enjoyed going and their begging to move back home was like pushing a knife through my heart.
I could handle whatever life threw at me, but like every mom, I take my kids’ emotions and wear them like a heavy down jacket. When they suffer, it’s like a giant hole is missing from my heart.
As a mom I knew the pain they were feeling was short-term and that it was normal for them to experience all the feelings. If they didn’t, what would that have said about the life we had before? I trusted that we had heard from the Lord, and I knew that wherever He called us to be would be good.
But there was still nothing I could do to protect them from the pain of this transition. They had to go through it. I knew that just on the other side there would be something better. We just had to get there. So every day I walked the road with them and tried to love them a little harder.
I laid in bed with them a little longer each night, reminding them it would all be OK. There were extra late-night movies and snuggles on the couch. Spontaneous trips for ice cream and bags of joyride candy in Target when I normally would’ve said no. Even when they were angry, I was there. Whatever I could do to surround them with love, I did. I wanted to ease the pain as much as possible.
I couldn’t help but think about the Lord and if that’s how it is with me sometimes.
Where Is God When It Hurts?
You see God knows that sometimes there are certain things I have to go through in order to transform into the woman that he has called me to be. And sometimes those things are really really hard. It hurts and I cry out in anger and frustration. I wonder why God would allow me to go through pain and discomfort when he loves me. Can’t you just take this away, Lord? I can’t help but wonder if he knows that just on the other side there is something better too.
Yes. He does.
You see all throughout scripture we are reminded of one overwhelming theme: God loves us. It’s displayed over and over and over again. Through every story of good and of difficulty, His steadfast faithfulness and relentless pursuit of us is present.
We are reminded that he promises to walk through this life with us, and that although it’s not easy, He won’t leave us or forsake us and that all things work together for our good. Even when it’s hard. He wears my pain like a heavy down jacket, and even if I don’t see the good on this side, He promises that all will be made new on the other side of eternity.
Grasping the Magnitude of God’s Love
It’s been a month since moving and while it will take a long time to feel like home, we are already settling in. Our kids are feeling better every day, and they can already see glimpses of the good.
Our family is stronger together and, in the Lord, than we would’ve been if we stayed and I can’t help but be overwhelmed with gratitude at His love for us.
Maybe you feel like the Lord abandoned you. Maybe you’re upset or hurt, or maybe you feel like this difficulty will overtake you. Can I tell you that it won’t? He’s not mad, and you’re not forgotten. You are loved so fiercely, and just like my kids cried out to me, we can cry out to him. Every tear is like a nauseating shot to the gut. He loves us that much. It’s why even in the midst of his death on the cross, he cried out for us: “Father forgive them.”
He knows that there is something good, just on the other side. The God who created every intricate and delicate system in the world chose to make you. Yes, you. Whether you choose to acknowledge it and accept the extra reminders of his love every day is up to you. He loves you nonetheless.
His love is not contingent; it’s unconditional. In the good and in the bad, it is present. My love for my children is only a fraction of God’s love for me, and even though we can’t fully understand it, we can choose to walk in it.
Today I choose to see the extra reminders of His love for me and to trust that He is leading me towards good. You can do the same. A simple prayer, a whisper: “Lord, I need you.” And then you watch and you wait and you will see.
“Where can I go to escape from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in the land of the dead, you are there too.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me; your strength will hold me fast.
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light around me become night,’
even the darkness is not dark to you; the night shines like the day. Darkness is as bright as the light to you.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, you are still with me”
Psalm 139: 7-18
