I feel messy and purpose-less. That’s it. That’s how I feel and I didn’t know how to describe it until I attended a moms morning at my church recently. I have been isolating myself. I decided to step out because God was suggesting to go to moms connect. My payment wasn’t going through the three times I tried to sign up, so I was starting to resign that I shouldn’t go. But I felt a push that I should go and that’s a push you recognize is God saying: just try it. I tried one more time and it worked!

What the speaker had to say hit me hard and I felt like I had streams coming from my eyes instead of tears. I couldn’t stop the emotion leak out, and I ended up just letting it. If I can’t be real in the moments when my emotion is showing up, I am certain I will end up detaching myself more. She also said a word over and over that kept drawing me in. Her story was no where near mine and I am terribly sorry for her loss. The word was numb.

For me, I’m emotionally numb, but I think that is just being numb. She suggested pressing in to the places you are numb and that busyness numbs us too.  That hit me like a lightbulb lit up. That was the answer. The one I had been avoiding. She said God is waiting to meet you there and Jesus wants authenticity. She set a question to us: What is the answer you are afraid of? I realized, I have some digging to do.

Hers was a loss in her family that breaks your heart and could break your soul. Why does that relate to me? Why have I gotten to the point where my emotions feel like I experienced a death? I am very lucky to have not so far. In my family its only been family members I did not know or church members I was not close to. I felt sad and sorry but not grief. She had real grief and I feel like I’ve created mine. I feel like I have messed up my life with my emotions in the way that I made my problem myself.

And yet she said something that also speaks to me. God has us. We have a purpose. Our ministry is our children. Not the title wife or mother, but we are daily ministering to our children. Titles are exhausting and leave you without purpose if that title is taken away or doesn’t apply anymore. Our children see us, they take what they see and hear and project or reenact that.

We can’t control everything. But we can manage it. That’s an important takeaway I got. As moms or women in general, we try to control our kids friends and decisions because we know better, but we can’t do that. We can manage our kids and their choices though. If we have a hard time with this, Jesus helps us with a perspective shift. We can’t change ourselves but Jesus can change our perspective. We are called to know Jesus. Its starts and ends with Jesus; we are in the middle and that’s the best management.

She made a statement that I saw yet another question I need to answer: Who is God, when there are deep disappointments, lost and grief?

You are being pursued. Stand up for your life. For your purpose. 

Breathe. Take a deep breath and breathe.