How to Survive Tough Times

Walking Away

Megan Breedlove February 2, 2009 No Comments

Two years ago, my family and I went to Branson, Missouri, to visit my mom and stepfather. At the time, Ellie was four, Kenny was two and a half, Lindsey was one, and I was a couple months pregnant with Jessica. One day, we decided to take the kids to a beautiful lake not too far from where we were staying. We loaded up all the gear we would need—towels, sunscreen, plastic inflatable toys, water shoes—and headed for the lake.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, and it was warm, but not too hot (especially considering that we are used to Texas summers). The scenery was gorgeous. The water was perfectly clear. Best of all, since it was fairly early in the morning, there was only one other family at this little beach.

We staked out a spot and headed for the water. The two younger kids wanted to stay where it was still quite shallow, so I sat in the water as they played around me. We even noticed about a million little fishes that swam by just a little further out. Wow! Fish! Right there! The kids were excited, though a little scared.

My husband took Ellie on one of the inflatables out into deeper water, where he could pull her along and she could float. They were having a grand time, and so were we, playing together. It was all brand new to the kids. I felt so relaxed, sitting in the water and feeling it lap around me, being just the right temperature, enjoying the beautiful scenery in the sunny quiet, and being with the people I loved most in all the world.

All too soon, it was time to go. The kids were getting tired. So we got out of the water. I made sure the little kids were following me. Lindsey ran on ahead as we made our way towards where we had left our towels and other stuff. Kenny trailed behind.

Actually, Kenny was what we call “dinking around”—that is, not following promptly. I encouraged him one more time to follow me, and then I turned away and began walking—slowly—hoping he would decide to follow.

Instead, after I had taken a few steps, he began to wail.

I turned back to see him rooted to the spot where he had been when I turned away from him. He was wailing, the tears flowing down his face.

It was a clear that Kenny felt abandoned and afraid.

Immediately, I turned back. I went to him, hugged him, and then scooped him up into my arms, holding him close and saying, “It’s okay, Kenny. Mommy’s here.”

I carried him back to the van that way, secure in my arms, comforting him with my touch, my voice, and my nearness.

It wasn’t until later that I thought about how this reflects our relationship with God.

Sometimes, it feels like God is walking away, doesn’t it?

Leaving us behind. Abandoning us.

Maybe we’ve gone through a season of hurt where it felt like instead of being close to us, God was more distant than ever before.

Maybe it felt like we were falling further behind, getting more and more desperate, until finally we were so far behind we could only see God disappearing in the distance.

What do we do during those times?

Sometimes, we get angry. We get mad at God for not making us feel better. For letting us hurt. Fine, we think, walk away. I’ll make it on my own, if that’s what I have to do.

Sometimes, like Kenny did, we simply wail out our anguish, as God (we think) gets farther and farther away.

What should we do? What is the right response when we feel distant from God, and we’re afraid, and we desperately need him?

Do what Kenny did.

Cry out.

Wail out your anguish to God.

You see, if I, as a human mother, heard my son’s anguish, was moved with compassion in my heart for him, and responded, how much more will God, the perfect Parent, respond to our heart’s cry?

Dear friend, it’s true that sometimes, God won’t fix our situation. Sometimes, no matter how much we cry out, the pain and grief will not disappear. They are something to be worked through, not something to get rid of.

But though He won’t always respond by fixing our situation, God will respond with Himself.

You see, God has promised. And He cannot and will not lie.

When you need Him, cry out. He’s there. It may look and feel like He’s far away, but He’s as close as your heart, and ready to respond when you need Him.

Is life going well for you right now? Call Him. He’s there to rejoice with you.

Is life more painful than you ever imagined? Cry out to Him. He’s there to grieve with you.

Crawl into his lap, lay your head on His chest, and feel His loving arms around you, holding you close.

Or if you can’t even crawl, then just cry out.

He will come to you.

Psalm 55:17—Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice.

Sick

Megan Breedlove January 12, 2009 No Comments

My daughter Lindsey is a cuddlebug. In fact, she always has been. She has always enjoyed close physical contact.

Sometimes, she wants to play. She loves being tossed, flipped, or spun. She loves climbing all over me if I lie down. She loves being tickled or “eaten”, which is when I make growling noises and pretend like I am eating her shoulders, her ears, or her cheeks.

Other times, Lindsey simply enjoys being close. Yesterday, I was sitting on the couch talking to one of the other children, when I realized that Lindsey was sitting right next to me. She had climbed up onto the couch and snuggled against me so easily and quietly that I hadn’t even noticed when she came. We sat like that for awhile, with Kenny later joining us, and it was one of the best parts of my day.

When Lindsey is sick, she seems to feel a special need to cuddle. She wants to be held close as much as possible. The most recent time she was sick, she wanted to lie on me and be cuddled.

Did she want fun and games?

No.

Did she want me to take her somewhere?

No.

Did she want horseplay and tickles?

Definitely not.

She simply wanted to be close to me when she was feeling at her worst.

When a child is sick, her mother’s presence and touch are the most healing therapies in the world. They’re even better than chicken soup. They’re better than 7-Up and crackers. I think they even do more good sometimes than medication (though there are certainly times where medication is necessary).

God designed it that way. He designed the relationship between mother and child in such a way that when the child feels sick, she wants her mommy. And He designed cuddling during times of illness not only to help the child heal, but to strengthen the bond between mother and child.

Do you know something? God designed the relationship between Him and His children—us—to work the same way.

When we feel at our worst, He is the One Who can (and will!) bring us the most comfort. Just as you welcome an ill child into your warm, comforting embrace, so does our Heavenly Father welcome His hurting child into His arms.

Had Lindsey refused my comfort when she was sick, she likely would have gotten better anyway. The difference is that if we refuse our Heavenly Father’s comfort, we may not get entirely better. We may wind up with unresolved pain that lingers long after the onset of the original hurt—sometimes years.

So why don’t we seek His comfort?

It could be that we’re afraid to face the pain, and we don’t realize that the pain will hurt worse apart from the Father.

It could be that we blame our Father for the fact that we hurt in the first place, and we let our anger keep us far from His comfort, when what we don’t realize is that with Him or without Him, the hurt would have happened, and what makes the most sense is for us to ask Him to comfort us through it.

Or, it could be that we anticipate a negative reaction when we come to him. Sometimes, we get this idea that we as Christians aren’t really supposed to hurt. We’re supposed to be able to bear everything with a smile on our face. If we can’t, we reason, it must mean we don’t have enough faith. So we don’t come to God for comfort because we can’t come “correctly”—that is, having handled the problem on our own first, in order to show Him…what?

Friend, if this is what you’re afraid of, then you’re misunderstanding God’s very nature.

When Lindsey was sick and came to me for comfort, I didn’t lecture her on how she should act when she is sick. I didn’t tell her that she was being a wimp and send her off to get better by herself. I didn’t even give her any reassurances on how she would get better eventually.

I simply held her and loved her.

If we can be so loving toward our children, and God is so vastly more loving than we are, why would we ever think we would receive anything less than a perfectly loving welcome? If we know how to comfort our children when they are sick, why would we think God wouldn’t comfort us in the way we need?

Oh, friend, how do you need comfort from God today?

I don’t know what is happening in your life. I don’t know the ways you might be hurting.

But I do know that God knows, and that He cares more about you than you could ever imagine.

Let Him comfort you. Climb up into His lap, and lay your head on His chest. Feel His everlasting arms around you as He simply loves you through your hurt with the nearness of His presence.

Matthew 7:11—If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

Luke 13:34—How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!

Mommy, You Can Do It!

Megan Breedlove December 15, 2008 No Comments

I enjoy running. I like to run through my neighborhood or in one of a couple special locations nearby. I love the way it taxes my body and the sense of accomplishment I feel when I am done. Basically, I love almost everything about it.

Ellie and Lindsey like to go with me when I run. If they are at home when I go, they always ask to go with me. Of course, at five-and-a-half and two-and-a-half, they can’t keep up the pace I can. This means I have to push them in our double stroller.

It is definitely not a jogging stroller. It is heavy, and it doesn’t steer well. With the weight of the two girls, combined with the stroller’s weight, I’m probably pushing an extra hundred pounds when I take them with me. Needless to say, this makes my workout quite a bit more difficult.

One morning when I decided to go running, Lindsey was at preschool, so I took only Ellie. I may have taken the baby, too. In any case, I was pushing close to a hundred pounds and trying to improve upon my previous run. It was tough.

One thing you should know about Ellie is that she is a great encourager. She is quick to see that someone needs encouragement and to come alongside them. In this case, I was the person in need.

I had made some comment about how I still had five minutes to go. I don’t remember if I specifically mentioned that the run was difficult, or if she must have heard it in my voice. In any case, Ellie said, “Do you need some encouragement?”

“Yes, I do,” I said.

So for the next five minutes, she sang, “Mommy, you can do it,” over and over, to the same tune, one which she had made up.

I have finished runs with more energy left, but I have never finished a run feeling more uplifted.

“Mommy, you can do it,” she sang, over and over and over.

I can still hear her sweet little voice singing to me.

When it came time for my cool-down period, I slowed to a walk. I let my breathing slow down a little, and then, I said, “Ellie, thank you for encouraging me. You really made me feel better, and you helped me finish running when it was difficult.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

“And Ellie, I want you to know something,” I said.

“What?”

“I want you to know that just as you encouraged me when I was having a difficult time, God can and will encourage you when you are having a difficult time. All you have to do is ask him.”

Dear mommy friend, the same thing applies to us as mommies. Yes, God sometimes encourages us without our asking for it. But sometimes, he waits for us to ask him for what we need.

As I told Ellie, if we ask, God will be there, and he will encourage us. Maybe the encouragement won’t come in the way we were hoping for or expecting, but it will come.

There are times when God chooses to let us walk by faith without the specific word from him that we are looking for. But even in those times, we have the encouragement found in the Bible, and we can know that it is true even if we don’t have the emotions we would like to accompany it.

As I ran those last five minutes, I heard Ellie’s song over and over. Its sweetness flowed into my soul and gave me the endurance I needed to press on joyfully.

Was the run still difficult? Yes…and no.

Physically, it was still difficult. Those hundred pounds hadn’t gotten any lighter. But mentally, and in my heart, the rest of the run was a breeze.

I ran joyfully.

I wonder…is it possible to run the race of life joyfully even when things are difficult?

It is.

With God’s encouragement, his strength, and his joy, we can run well even when we’re pushing a hundred extra pounds. Maybe we can’t run fast, but we can run well.

That last five minutes was probably the slowest part of my run, but it was the best. My attitude was even better then than it had been at the beginning, when I ran with little difficulty.

The same can be true for any of us in any situation.

Maybe your situation, maybe someday mine, is difficult, tragic, even agonizing. That part may not change, just as the weight I was pushing didn’t change.

But what can change is the weight of your soul.

You can’t do it on your own. But God can, and will. How do we know? Because he’s promised.

From the front seat of the stroller, Ellie’s encouragement helped me finish my run.

From alongside you and within you, God’s encouragement will bear you up and carry you home.

Isaiah 40:31—But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Nehemiah 8:10—The joy of the LORD is your strength.

Isaiah 46:4—Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

Am I Okay, Mommy?

Megan Breedlove September 22, 2008 2 Comments

I didn’t see exactly what happened. I had one of my younger daughter’s diapers in hand, and she and I were heading into my son’s room so I could use his wipes to change her diaper. As I walked toward the door of his room, I heard him fussing, and at the same time, I realized that he was crouched on the floor in a kind of odd position. From the expression on his face, I could tell he wasn’t seriously hurt, but I knew that he had fallen.

“Oh, you bonked,” I said sympathetically. (Around our house, “bonked” is the technical term for “fell down.”)

Kenny looked up at me with his big, liquid brown eyes, the expression on his face halfway between tears and calm, as if ready to go either way at any moment. “Are you okay, Mommy?” he asked pitifully. “Are you okay?”

He meant, of course, “Am I okay?”

“You’re okay, Kenny,” I said comfortingly. “You’re okay.”

Kenny got up then without crying, and went about his business. And as I continued on into his room to change my daughter’s diaper, I realized, oh, the parallels between Kenny’s situation and our situation as children of God.

Something bad had happened to Kenny. It was bad, and it was unexpected. He fell down, and it probably scared him and maybe even hurt him a little. He didn’t know how to react. Was this a bad situation? Was it not so bad? Should he cry? Shouldn’t he? What should he do?

Kenny sought out the best person he knew to help him make sense of the situation—me. “Am I okay, Mommy?” he asked in his own way. “Am I okay?”

I calmly and comfortingly assured him that he was, in fact, okay, and that was all he needed to enable him to move on and put the “bonk” behind him. He didn’t stay there on the floor arguing with me or doubting me; he accepted my assessment of the situation and moved forward in life as if he knew—which he did—that what I had said was completely true.

Do we do the same with God? First, when we encounter the unexpected bonks of life that scare us and maybe even hurt us a little (or a lot), is the first thing we do to seek out God to make sure we are okay? Or do we focus on our pain, physical or emotional, and decide we’re not okay before we even talk to him?

Kenny could have done that. He could have started crying, and he would have been justified. It’s okay to cry and be upset when you’re scared and hurt. I would have comforted him, and eventually, he would have moved on anyway. But the way he chose to respond worked out much better for him.

There are times in life when we are hurt, and there is no possibility of seeing it otherwise. If Kenny had broken his leg when he fell, he would have been undeniably hurt. Likewise, when tragedy strikes us, we are undeniably wounded. Life hurts sometimes. Pain crops up unexpectedly, and it scares us. And like a small child might, we cry.

That’s okay. It’s okay to cry when we’re hurt, and to seek comfort in the Father’s arms. But we have to be careful not to decide we’re seriously injured when really, we aren’t. Sometimes, it’s better to check with the Father for His wisdom on how to react, before we decide we’re seriously wounded.

But during those times when the hurt is unmistakable, when we’ve come crashing down, or our life has come crashing down around us, we cry, and we should do what Kenny would have done, had he been seriously injured—seek out our Father. Maybe we can’t run to him because we’ve been injured so badly, but you know what? He’ll come to us. That is part of the beauty of His love and grace.

Either way—as we check with Him to discover how badly we are injured, or as we cling to Him sobbing—eventually He’ll tell us, “You’re okay. Child, you’re okay.”

God doesn’t minimize our pain. Remember that He lived on earth, too. Scripture tells us that He cried when one of His best friends died. He knows physical pain, and grief. He knows tears. He knows sorrow.

But He also has an eternal perspective. He knows that whatever might happen to us, we are still okay—and not just when our circumstances are pleasant. He knows that we can be okay even in the midst of agonizing pain and tragedy.

How can we be okay when inside, we’re breaking? When our heart is being torn in two, and we feel like we can’t take it? When the blows just won’t stop coming, and we feel like maybe we’ve gone down for the last time?

The answer lies in His loving heart and hands. Because ultimately, what makes us “okay” has nothing to do with our circumstances. Ultimately, we are okay because God loves us and will never leave us. If we equate being “okay” with having pleasant circumstances we feel equipped to handle, then we may spend much of our lives being “not okay”.

Dear friend, where does your security come from? Are you okay today? If not, crawl into the Father’s lap as fast as you can and talk to Him. Hear His loving care for you. If you are okay—is it because your circumstances are pleasant? Or is it because you know in the depths of your soul that no matter what happens, you will be okay because being okay comes from eternal security and not from temporal pleasantness? Oh, friend, if you’re not sure, crawl into His lap and let Him speak to your heart and soul.

You will be okay.

He promises.

Romans 8:38-39—For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.