Where is my help to come from?

From Psalm 121:
I lift up my eyes to the mountains; where is my help to come from?

The LORD will guard you from all evil;
he will guard your life.
The LORD will guard your coming and your going,
both now and forever.

…

You must keep to what you have been taught and know to be true (2 Tim 3:14)

…

We returned Saturday. I cannot write when I am home…too busy living.

God protects us. We know him to be love, to be good, to be faithful.

Instead of asking “God why are you doing this?” I can take out the question, and in the running dialogue, replace it with “We don’t know why this is happening.”

As a reminder that we cannot always find the reason why we experience the suffering we do. Why do I have three perfectly healthy children, and then Peter, who will have many many problems with his health as his electrolytes become easily unbalanced? We do not know.

Why the timing of all these things?

Why did my husband break his foot?

It there some cosmic book written, dictating these things, “it was meant to be” or is it chance, the chaos of a fallen world? Did he really just step off the ladder wrong?

We cannot know. We know God permits things to happen. We know God works all things for good for those who love him. We know God is love.

I knew I could marry my husband because I could see in his love for me the way God loved me. Now I find I am learning how to love God through crisis by my love for my husband. When we fight, the thing that always cools the heat is the reminder that we are on the same side. It is not me against my husband.

So it is with God. God wants good things for us. He just knows more about how to bring it about.

If I start there, then I can begin to see all the incredible ways God is helping us. The confluence of events that actually work to make things easier, not harder. The passes for the Academy of Sciences at Family House, the occurrence of the 6-year old’s birthday on a Monday when my husband does not work, the assignment of the nurse I am most open with to take care of Peter, the ache of the night nurse who loves Peter when something bad happened, the amazing coffee machine someone surprised us that makes me feel so fine, the ease I feel driving in the city when I must drive because my husband’s foot is broken, and the list goes on and on and on.

At a different time I would have heard these readings with bitterness towards God. It would be the great, “yeah, right” that echoes in the heart of so many grieving and suffering when they hear of God’s goodness. I feel I have rediscovered the God of my youth, the God I knew and stayed devoted to but felt far from during these years of marriage.

I do not know what Thursday will bring, or the month or next year or life. I just know Boston will be a good place to vacation because there are experts there on TPN in case anything happens to Peter during a vacation. I look out my window and see St. Ignatius Church on the horizon, across the city, and I feel hope. It was my pilgrimage site during young adulthood, and the little Carmelite convent across from it.

I am not without fear. I’m terribly afraid. But I am still standing. I might crumble inside in a few days. but for now I am standing. We can keep moving forward.