Time warp

Sometimes I find myself going back to the single referral picture we got in the spring of last year, and I can't seem to reconcile that picture with our current reality.  The child in that picture, in her visa picture (from when she first came to the orphanage at age two) seem like a completely different person: so small, so placid, or was it timid?  Now I look at the gangly, wild six year old whom I call daughter, and I feel like I'm in two different worlds looking at two different children.

Today has been a trenches kind of day.  A run laps around the farm to help get emotions under control kind of day.  An I'm still in my pajamas at 5:30pm kind of day.  A nothing is going wrong now but I'm so exhausted from the last seven hours (and seven months) that I'm struggling to be present in the moment kind of day.  I go back to those pictures and remember that longing, that compassion.  I look at my present and feel frustration and emotional exhaustion.  Will I ever feel like I'm really her mom?  Like she is my precious daughter?

Precious.  That is what she is.  That is how HE sees her, and how He sees me, no matter how many times I fall short.  I require so much grace, and yet I am often so resentful of having to extend the same grace.  Why is that?  I'm so resentful that my life has been imploded, that I'm spread out thinner than I can possibly bear every single day with no finish line in sight, that my darling N is having to process such a difficult situation as well.  I forget what JP has gone through.  In those moments of defiance or chaos, I forget what she has experienced in her short life, and have to force myself to remember that all is not what it would have been if I had carried her in my womb and held her from her first moments on this earth.  Five and a half years.  That's what we missed, and it is such a long road to redemption, on all sides.  And I resist it, because I'm tired, and being refined hurts like hell, because that's what is being burned away, hell.  

I have always identified closely with the apostle Peter.  I understand his impetuousness, his zeal, his propensity for sticking his foot in his mouth, his long road to discernment and listening.  One of my favorite verses about him is Matthew 16:18, when Jesus gave him the name Peter:

"And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

As my sister so aptly pointed out to me a couple of weeks ago, the way this verse is worded, "the gates of hell" implies either an assault on the fortress, or an escape from captivity.  I have never been afraid of charging the gate.  Give me my sword.  Well, the gate has been charged and the first battle won.  What do I fear?  A cage.  And the trenches feel very much like a cage.  Sitting with your tail in the mud in an indefinite, slow, steady, crawling kind of battle.  God help me.

God, help me.

The only way to even survive this battle, to win it, is to keep my eyes on him and do every single tiny thing, day in and day out, as though I am doing it directly for him, and no one else.  When I look past the person in front of me and see the face of my Love, all is glorious.  

Lord, let the scales fall from my eyes so I can see you through all this mess.  Open my eyes to see my enemy for who he is and renew my strength to fight him with everything in me. 

"Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me." (emphasis mine)