Two weeks ago, I shared the dark place I was in after my year of faith that never (always) was and my husband’s job loss. This week I want to share how God has begun to deliver me from that dark place into His light.  As is usually the case with God, it’s a series of small miracles that He allowed into my life that makes not only for a comforted soul, but a good story.  So go get a cuppa something good, sit back and watch how God works and begin to search for how He is working in your life.

The first thing I usually turn to when I’m battling something difficult is my praise and worship music.  It usually uplifts me, but this time my praise music only worked so well.  Mostly it just made me cry, but I needed to cry. Even though many of my friends, both on and offline, told me to just choose joy, I felt I couldn’t do that, even temporarily, without a good cry.  Sometimes you need a good pity party before you can move on.

Failing “Joy: The Musical,” I became a bit selfish.  I knew most of my Facebook friends followed me for some much needed levity and I must say I enjoy making people laugh, but I found I was unable to find the humor in things.  At first I didn’t post anything.  That went on for a week or so until my selfish need to find something to uplift my spirit took over and I began sharing all the memes I could find that spoke to God’s comfort.  What I found was something I never expected.  While I felt a bit better having these reminders as little hugs from God on my wall that I could read over and over again, God had other plans, both for me and my Facebook friends.  Those memes uplifted more than just me!  I began getting emails and Facebook messages from many who were wondering how I knew they needed to read that.  The fact that I had a hand in uplifting others made me feel useful.  At a time when I felt nothing was in my control, God gave me a small hand in doing something good for others.

Next, of course, was more concentrated prayer.  At first I didn’t feel close to God. I felt as if I were in a hole where His light couldn’t reach me, but then I began to feel Him near.  It didn’t change my situation, but it gave me times of joy even though I was still very unhappy.

Often I feel like I’m complaining if I, to use a word my grandmother used, kvetch to God.  I used to pray, but mostly for others.  I never really prayed for me.  What I found this time around was that expressing and sharing my feelings to my Lord was honest. Besides, God knows how we feel before we express it. You can’t pull a Jonah and hide from God what He already knows. God wants us to be real and He will help. I kept hearing in church from our pastor that it is hypocritical to walk into church and try to pretend all is well.  We finally told him and a few other church friends what happend and they are praying for us.

Then there is the matter of my happy pills–natural tranquilizers that help me alleviate the jitters and keep the stress attacks at bay.  The little voice in the back of my mind said it was a cop out to need them, but I had things to do now that we needed to make an income without benefit of a job.  I should just pick myself up by my own bootstraps, choose joy, trust God and move on, right?  Well, have any of you tried to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps?  If you are standing in them (the mess that has become your life), you cannot move yourself forward or pull yourself up by yanking on those bootstraps.  You need a little help.  I’m pretty small so my dh could lift me up, maybe even if he picked me up by my bootstraps.  Others might be able to help pick you up, but sometimes you cannot do it alone (because you’re standing IN them), even knowing that God loves you and is working in your life.  Sometimes part of what He is working in your life involves others: friends, family, doctors.  So after a month of taking these natural tranquilizers, I find I can calm down enough to do the things I need to do.

While I still have several times a day when the jitters hit, when I cry at toilet paper commercials, when I get angry at the towel because it landed in the sink instead of on the rack, when my insides feel like there are at least four other people in there, I do feel much better equipped to handle the overwhelming amount of things on my To Do List.

“To open a blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.” – Isaiah 42:7

That brings me to the series of little miracles God did for us both prior to and in the aftermath of the job loss.  I’ll talk about those in next week’s post.