Just after Midnight

I must say that in a mere 36 years, I have been here long enough to live out many of the “all things” of this verse.  I hadn’t always wanted to accept that the “all things” my Lord inspired Paul to write included those bad things though.

Like many baby Christians, initially, I accepted Christ and looked forward to the blessings.  I had no idea of the afflictions that came with the deal at the time.  God allowed me a great trial run.

Yet, life happens…death happens…wanting to die happens…realizing the need to live happens…thankfully in that order for me….Yet, I’ve been all these places many times over simultaneously lately.  I was there yesterday…actually last night…late…

I hadn’t even realized I’d been sitting in the bathroom so long…I’d been attempting to gather my thoughts over the news of my mother’s passing…I wasn’t sad per se…I was relieved, but still heavy within.

I’d planned last week that today’s post would be about Directing Your Current situation…I’d been researching a few days for accuracy…I thought I had a little more time to do what I needed to do before the news came.

I wrestled with the thought of whether I would still go to work today…this week…next week…whether I would share the news with anybody there…whether I would post what I had yesterday for hours…I was late to church deliberating…

And so I sat in the tub attempting to remember the words I’d rehearsed months ago…the song I’d planned to sing for her home-going celebration because I thought I’d be strong enough not to cry as I’d tried to manage each word without trembling…to have courage to sing the way I had as a child without fear…I’d hoped to gain that same vigor I had at four years old when I begged my mother to allow me to join the Angelic choir not only because she sort of made my brother do it, but because I really wanted to sing…like she had to me…with me so long ago.

Though the words of the song reminded me that the peace of God surpasses all understanding…the only wonder I’d had as my fingers shriveled in the inevitably cooling water was why did “peace” feel  like this…so incomplete?

God shared with me long ago the need to make amends with my mother.  He declared in my heart that the reasons for my own despair and internal imprisonment were because of unanswered questions and unrequited love…rather I should say now…the allusion of such because I know now how much my mother really did love me.  I, like so many others, bought the lie contrary to that fact.

Even now, I realize that God answered my prayers when He took her home.  I no longer had any excuses for delaying the book He’d placed on my heart so many years ago…The one that had a middle and boasted of a bright future, yet that omitted a beginning…

I now understand the warnings about focusing were of God and not naysayers…that I’d had so much pride in myself that I failed to remember God’s order…I had to finish what had already been started before I could think of beginning again…I had to close the chapters of my life that had been open to all the wrongs I’d gone through and rejoice in the good they would accomplish.

I now have my beginning because of my mother’s glorious end.  So with that I can rejoice in the timing of God…how this exact time last year I was praising Him for finding who I deemed to be the love of my life, my Joseph, yet this year on the same day of that first reunion, my mother was reunited with our Heavenly Father.

I hadn’t really contacted him regularly since the demise of whatever it was that had begun, but as I dried tears and ended the call with my brother, I sent the message anyway.

Bittersweet as it may seem…I remember last year being nervous at any attempt at love or even strong like because I knew things were not right between my mother and I…even when I received warnings that he may be the one, but now is NOT the time, I stepped ahead of God’s plan for a moment, bore the consequences of guilt, doubt, and rejection…Yet, even in that I’ve learned a lot…about myself…my priorities…my purpose…

I prayed for that to be corrected first…for me to be whole…for me to be truly ready to receive and give love the way God intends…

God granted this request with me first being able to finally and fully receive the love He’d been trying to give me for years and for allowing me the compassion to forgive myself and my mother.  In those steps, He taught me the true meaning of unconditional love.  Yet, I still long for more opportunities…

So still my prayer remains the same, but the difference between now and a year ago is that I’m no longer willing to sacrifice my obedience to God for my way of doing things.   There are simply things that I must finish before I can even think of testing romantic waters again. My children are my first priority now…

I understand that while it seems my life has been one big hurdle after another that the words I share will help others to at least think a little longer before they make the same mistakes I have.

I’m so grateful now that God decided the dates and times that He allowed certain trials to come into my life now.  He knew when He designed my mind that I would take notice of that, but that topic is for another day.

Still, the fact that He so lovingly decided to grant my mother eternal peace at one minute after midnight is definitely a good in the midst of my stack of “all things,” because I’ve known all my life that the darkest moment always fades just after midnight.  And indeed it has.

©2015 Nadia Davis. All Rights Reserved.