The Edge of Hope

I've been incredibly indecisive the last little bit in a lot of aspects of my life.

I thought and prayed about it for awhile and realized it's simple - I'm afraid.  

Last year my inability to stand up for myself and make a choice I knew was right got me hurt horribly.  I didn't stand up because I was afraid.  

And I'm still that same girl.  

I can make excuses.  Truly I can.  Someone that has loved as deeply and wholely I have knows what I stand to lose by jumping in.  

Into what? 

Into any life altering choice.

Dating. Singleness.  Moving.  Not moving.  Change.  Of any kind.  It all terrifies me.

Where I'm at, my little home, my three kids, and a job I love? I don't want to mess it up.  And so jumping into anything at all, knowing whatever jump I make could affect in a good or bad way every other aspect of my life? I'm terrified. 

So I stand at the edge of the cliff, watching.  Watching others take leaps of faith on my right and left. Some fall, some fly.  I sit and just watch.  I wait, hoping that somehow someway I'll just "know" when I can leap.  And I wait, and wait, and wait.  

Someday I hope I can push the memories of my last fall out of my mind.  Someday the excitement and hope of flying will outweigh the fear of falling.   

But someday is not today.

Today I'm sitting at the edge.  Just waiting.  Just hoping my heart can heal a little more.  Just trying to stay soft, and kind, and gentle.  Trying to not let the past heartbreaks harden my heart.  

I know God is sitting with me. Ever so patient.  Ever so loving.  And He gives me hope. Hope that flying isn't as far off in my future as I might think.  

I only cried a lot today.

Today I took my oldest to summer camp.   I only cried a lot.   He didn't at all.

I stuck around for awhile after most the other mom's left, not because I'm that mom....oh wait, yeah, I am that mom.    And yeah, I may have totally helped him carry stuff to his cabin, and I may have hung out and taken a bunch of photos, and yeah I may have totally asked one of his counselors to switch beds so that Casey and his friend Chase could be on the same bunk.  Yeah. I'm THAT mom.

I'm really glad he gets to have this experience with his friends.  

I'm really glad he has such good friends. 

Then I came home and had to find photos from when we stayed at this same campground 7 years ago as a family.  

I was helping out with a youth camp.  Chases parents were the youth pastors at our church at the time. 

Casey was 3, Chase was 2.  

(All the other photos I have of the two of them, either one of them is crying or one is running away from the camera....toddlers, what can you do!?)

I started crying looking through the photos. (It's been an emotional day, for real!) My kids were so little and so innocent. I was so naive and innocent. And for a moment I found myself feeling kinda sad at all that my kids and I had stolen from us in the ways of innocence.  

But then I thought about this amazing thing that happened at camp 7 years ago. 

My little family was prophesied over.  I don't remember much of it, but I do remember the one thing that stuck out in my mind. 

The prophecy at one point was specifically over my ex and it was about how the generational curses in his family ended at him and wouldn't be passed on to our kids.  

I didn't know what that meant at the time.  I can't blog about what all that means to me now.  I'd probably get sued over it or something really. 

I think about that prophecy now and I am in awe at who God is and what He does.  He knew even than that my world would be ripped apart but that it would be unto something better.  And not just that, He was going to rescue us from something even more horrible.  There would be pain in the process, but that in that process and in that loss and in that pain? He would be there.  

And today? Seeing my boy, in that same campground, with that light in his eyes, his hunger for Jesus and so much joy on his face?  I know that every bit of that word given over my little family 7 years ago was true and I am so grateful, so humbled, and so very loved by my Savior.