First Provision: End of Self

“For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3, NIV).

We were in big debt.

We were in marital conflict.

I was getting blamed for things I didn’t even know about. I was getting screamed at by creditors for unpaid “confidential” loans they’d kept secret from me.

The water heater was broken down, with no funds or credit to repair or replace it, and dirty diapers piling up and overflowing the diaper pail. (No way could I afford Pampers.)

Real estate tax was in arrears, mortgage was in arrears, Postman was delivering foreclosure notices I had to sign while he stood smiling.

All the bills were in arrears.

Stranded out in the country, I had no funds, no job (employee glut maxing out my job niche), no family nearby, and no car, since the day  that couple stopped by with my husband to look at the one I’d called my own, though never held in my name, and drove it away as their own.

What I did have was a brand new baby, but no certainty of even heat in the house or power for the pump to draw (cold) water, come tomorrow…

That’s when I came to my end: that horrendous year when all I felt like doing anymore was curling fetal behind the couch, never to come out again…

I didn’t: Curl up there like that. Mother-love kept me from it. Mother-love had blocked me from worse the year before, before my long prayed-for baby was even born. But was it just Mother love?

Second Provision: The Father’s Love

“I have loved you with an everlasting love…” (Jer 31:3)

No, it was Father Love that first checked me from self-annihilation, then later kept me dragging leaden legs room to room to care for that long-desired child I now didn’t know how to provide for. Though in the first case God’s hand had shown itself dramatically (another story), in this second case I still couldn’t grasp the faintest glimpse of it.

But, as time would soon reveal, Father Love was orchestrating a whole series of events that would crack open a door to my deliverance—and more.

And I hardly knew Him, or how to walk with Him, though my wrenching soul did keep crying out to Him.

I was just a shuffling wreck…

Next post:  A Friend’s Listening Heart