When my middle son was born he had terrible colic. He would cry for up to six hours a day. It was awful. When I asked his doctor about it, he responded, “This is very common and typically clears up after about the first six months.”
Six months?! I had already been pregnant for 40 weeks (and three days), gone through 19 hours of labor, and now you’re saying six more months?
I’m not very good at waiting. But apparently there was no fast-forward option or mute button on my baby boy, so I had no choice but to wait. There is a children’s story called “Going on a Bear Hunt” that repeats something like, “we can’t go over it, we can’t go under it, we must go through it.” Coincidentally my middle son’s nickname is Henry Bear. And for my little Bear, we must go through it.
In the midst of that season I began keeping a gratitude journal to combat the hopelessness that seemed to be haunting the corners of my mind. It was just a small notebook I kept on the window sill above my sink. When I was washing dishes or cooking dinner or bathing my newborn, that notebook would catch my eye and I would take a moment to write a few words of thanks to God. Nothing elaborate, and half the time just one word: coffee.
But that practice of gratitude helped me to get through one of the most trying seasons of my life.
Postpartum depression, colic, raising a toddler, my husband working two jobs, and yet, gratitude. It was the tether keeping my head above water. It walked me through the waiting.
Five years ago God called us 800 miles away from everything we had ever known. We visited a church in Flagstaff, Arizona that had dwindled down to twelve members and somehow survived for four years without a pastor. When we walked into that worn-down little lobby and sat on the pink pews, my husband and I both felt it; this was home.
While church planting might be compared to building a home, church revitalization is kind of like remodeling a fixer-upper. You want to honor the integrity of the original build, but there’s a lot of clearing out to do before it’s fully functional. Our faithful few, as we call them, had been so faithful to keep the church afloat without a shepherd, but, like all of us have a tendency to do, surviving had taken precedence over thriving.
My husband had read books about church changes – revitalizations, new hires, church plants – and everything he read said it takes about five years before things begin to really flourish after a big change.
Five years?! That might as well be six months with a colicky newborn.
I scoffed; I argued; I complained. Five years before these quirky habits change? Five years before children’s ministry is solid? Five years before we’re allowed to have coffee in the sanctuary? I can’t wait that long!
God has a funny way of using our previous life lessons to get us through things down the road.
I’ve gone back time and time again to my practice of gratitude to get me through the waiting, through the trial, through the depression.
In the last five years, as I’ve felt frustration, betrayal, and discouragement, I’ve gone back to what I learned in the training grounds of motherhood – gratitude. I open my eyes to the goodness God is already doing. I count the fruit He is already providing. I breathe out a prayer of thankfulness.
My husband memorized Psalm 27:14 at the beginning of our church revitalization, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” To be strong, to be courageous, doesn’t always look like putting on armor and going into battle. So often it looks like small moments of thankfulness, eyes that are open to the goodness of God, and a girl who isn’t rushing and pushing and controlling so that what she thinks is best gets done first.
Be strong, be courageous.
Wait upon the Lord.
Thank you for sharing from your life experience. Amazing God that not only teaches through the experience but also uses it to sustain at a later time!!