A Hallway Called Transition

Really, it has been an extraordinary journey, my "walk with God". I am writing today because I find myself in another of life's emotional wrestling matches, due to an extended transition period. Ugh. I have come to intensely hate transition! You know, that proverbial "hallway" wherein all doors are closed, and the only thing remotely open is a sky-light that can't be reached from where you are! That would accurately describe where Gene and I are right now. Sort of a "Wood between the Worlds", without the appropriately colored ring! (The readers of C.S. Lewis will understand that metaphor.) It is a terribly frustrating feeling!

It know I already said this, but I really, really hate transition, and I am all too familiar with it. I had seven children with little to no intervention, so I am well acquainted with those last hours or minutes that usually constitute the "transition" period, when the labor goes from barely tolerable to "I'm going to die!!!". Thankfully it is usually over quickly, however, and the baby is here, which makes the memory of it all tolerable enough to risk doing it again. But there was one instance in which the horrific transition pain occurred again and again, only to stop abruptly having produced no baby yet, over a period of three weeks! Meanwhile my know-it-all Ob-Gyn was putting me off, in order to be "Quite sure I was full term"! Despite the fact that I could have applied for my own time zone, and was pretty sure - at the seventh full term pregnancy - what transition should feel like! I howled when that same stubborn idiot scheduled a friend of mine to be induced a whole week early because she was going on vacation near the due date! Go figure! Thankfully this was to be my last pregnancy - and I did not kill the doctor by sitting on her.

Though I did suffer indescribably during those weeks - thanks to her - from physical pain, emotional fear, and a dull sense of abandonment! I was tempted to believe that God had left me to die from eternal pregnancy! Not that this thought process was the least bit rational, but the pain rattled me so much that rational thinking fled, taking with it all nine fruit of the Spirit! It was not a pretty site! I was desperate beyond expression, and miserable beyond imagining. "Trapped and tortured" almost describes the anxiety of those days. At that time my ONLY comfort was that I was pretty sure that I had heard God say that this was to be the last! But I was beginning to think it was because He had not intended that I live through this one! I had a lot of hard thoughts about God during that time, and about my husband for not doing something on my behalf! Because, you see, God certainly COULD have made that labor effectively do its thing - as He had the six previous times! Because God COULD have made the doctor more proactive, or my husband more sympathetic and willing to take up my plight with that doctor! And really to this day, I can not say why He made me endure that awful time.

I have reasoned that perhaps Emma (who finally came out, weighing in at nine pounds and twelve ounces!) - just needed that extra time in there? For whatever reasons, which I may or may not ever understand! Or perhaps, for some reason, the horrid physical suffering I endured as an infant - which continued until I left home - from extreme sexual, emotional and physical abuse - wasn't enough to prepare me for what I might face later?! Of course I really hope that is not it! But I have to say that I am one tough cookie. And I have to conclude that God is merciful and loving to keep hold of me! He took my accusations in stride very mercifully, so I didn't lose Him in the process, for which I am very grateful!

So now, as we go through this mental torment once again, of feeling called to a vision for which we have NO resources with which to fulfill it - as we feel trapped in a hallway that seems to have little oxygen - little light - and little anything in the way of support or encouragement, fellowship or comfort - we are trying to pass the test this time, and not follow the advice of Job's wife - who suggested that he simply "curse God and die"! I am not sure I haven't already tried that, actually, but He isn't playing those games, so I'm still here. Seriously, I don't know how He puts up with us! That He does put up with us at all, and that judgment takes so long to come around - is proof enough to me that He is as Loving as He claims! We judge Him from our limited perspectives, but we would be SOOOO much harder on our ungrateful selves! I occasionally lose sight of Him, and when I do I have a break-down! I hate this place! I KNOW it is a necessity - to show us what we are, and are not, made of! I KNOW that He will never leave me or forsake me - no matter how it feels! I KNOW that He has a plan for us - and that HE will see to it that we somehow get there! He got me seven kids didn't He? After the medical profession firmly assured me that it couldn't possibly ever happen!

I have been in this hallway many times through the years. I got into college when my parents were not able to help at all, and lived hundreds of dollars below the poverty line. I "just happened" to choose the college in the town where my future husband lived, and "just happened" to be assigned a class project with his room mate, who led me to the baptism of the Holy Spirit before he led me to the church which Gene attended! Gene and I both "just happened" to be drawn to the same family which would mentor us, and in which we got into music ministry.

When that season had passed, we then "just happened" to find a job and house in NC while on vacation visiting my Dad, just when we were feeling pressure to separate from that family and go our own way. And then, when that situation swiftly deteriorated, having fulfilled the purpose of getting us up here, Gene "just happened" to find a job, and a house that was related to the job in one day's time! And when that season came to an end, and we wanted to try "living by faith" and building our own business, there "just happened" to be a trailer on the church property which no one was inhabiting, that we could live in!

It was into that two bedroom trailer which we moved with two small children, one only a few weeks old. It was also into this trailer, as time went on, that we brought three more children into the world! And when the church needed that trailer moved off the property so they could expand - my sister "just happened" to have some land to which it could be moved.

We lived in that trailer for a few years. It was some of the happiest in our lives, our family was growing, and we were free. Someone had given us an upright piano while we lived there, which was slowly working its way through the pressed wood flooring (because someone had not braced it as he was told to do). I was praying that we'd find another dwelling before the thing worked its way all the way through! One day, as I went to help my sister who was quite ill, it occurred to me to take Jonathan to see the milker's house which he had lived in as a toddler - and it was empty! And the owner drove up right that minute and we struck a deal to rent it! How grand that was!

Then, after adding two more children to the lot, that three bedroom one bath home, which had seemed so gracious after the trailer, was now closing in on us, or falling out from under us! We began to feel that our time there was drawing to a close - but we had no better options. Indeed, we had none at all. Rent for anything near large enough was way out of our budget, and purchasing was out of the question! It was then our pastor suggested that we apply for a Habit for Humanity home! And despite the many reasons we shouldn't have gotten it - we did! And though we have come close to losing it many times since then - we haven't! God has always been faithful to us. There have been a few of His people who have often gone out on a limb for us. Despite the messes we seemed to make of things, we have a large amount of favor where it counts!

So now, when I am sorely tempted to get out of patience and fall into despair over the utter hopelessness of our current hallway, I am doing as King David did in his many hallways, I am recounting the faithfulness of My God! I am older now, and starting over is certainly NOT what I want to do! But I would NOT want to miss His will for us either! And when has it ever been about wants!?

I find that these days, as the dark clouds gather threateningly over our nation, I am trying to bring all my strength to bear on trusting Him. Trusting that we haven't missed His boat - in all our mucking around! Trusting that He will get us where He wants us one way or another - in due season! Trusting that He is more than able, and willing to keep that which we have committed to Him, (which He committed to us, and which we returned to Him because it was beyond us)! Trusting that He will give that vision back to us - and bring it to fruition - when He has grown us into it!

Trusting, most fervently, that no matter what - whether we have missed His boat or not, whether we get to be part of the vision or not - that His mercy will still bear us into His presence in that day. Trusting that no matter how we are called to live for Him, or even to die for Him, that He will sustain us, and His grace will bear us up! As King David also acknowledged, I have been thrown onto Him since birth! He is all I've ever had, and He has been more than enough! I must simply keep my focus trained on Him, and not on the insane world! I must be more aware of His workings than of how fast the hand-basket is unraveling, in which America in which I now live, is hastening toward hell! I must not grieve for the judgment she has called down upon us, but simply trust that His Grace is truly sufficient to bear us through it. His wrath, after all, is not for the faithful, but historically, sometimes the faithful do get caught up in the judgments of the wicked around them! Still, even if we are attacked by the unrighteous, as the first martyr for the faith, Stephen, was - still even while going down he was reassuring himself and others of the goodness of the Lord! And that goodness gave him the strength to endure to the end - and if we endure it will be because of that same strength. We must continue to reassure ourselves and each other of His goodness! We must keep site of it! It is the only light in this hallway. And it is the only way we will find the strength to hold onto God while He pulls us through that skylight in the hallway!

~Selah