continued from "small spaces" ...
I went back to work the next day, hoping to take some time to think through my longing for a more "spacious" existence, and to wonder whether God had in fact given me that word as a way of legitimizing our need, even as a prayer. I sat down to read a bit more in Psalm 18 before starting my cleaning routine at church, and from where I had left off the night before the very next verses were:
He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the LORD was my support. He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me. (vs. 16-19, NIV, emphasis added)
(photo credit bizoon/123rf.com)
I realized my blurry eyes may have scanned down the page the night before and unconsciously picked up the word "spacious." I've learned through my journey of faith not to look too hard for signs from God one way or another, if at all (perhaps sometimes to my loss), but rather to wait on a more general sense of peace about directions and decisions. But regardless, I knew I couldn't discredit the timing of the verse as complete coincidence. I exhaled just a bit as I closed my Bible and got up to set to work, and gave myself some more permission to pray for the hope which the word suggested.
For the first time in weeks if not months I was able to finish my Saturday cleaning shift, my heaviest of the week, with a little more energy than usual and to get home around 8 PM, instead of the usual 9:30 or later which often makes the turnaround to church the next morning difficult, and also to catch my before he went to bed. I had worked longer shifts earlier in the week to make this possible, and was happy about the small token of self-discipline I had demonstrated.
But at some point on the drive home I grew suddenly tired as I often do after work, and my mind turned in on itself with one of the mini dilemmas which consume it from time to time. By the time I walked in the door, despite my intention to be available to my family, I desperately needed some time and space to regroup. I barely nodded to my wife and toddler son when I walked in, who were eating a late dinner in the living room, which I imeddiately noticed still hadn't been cleaned for the week, and went straight to my office where I found my wife had left her guitar right inside the door. I generally prefer to find things the way I left them in the one corner of the world I can call my own, but I calmly went to move the guitar case outside of the room, until it burst open and emptied its primary contents and what seemed like a hundred sheets of music onto the floor. As matter-of-factly as I could, I told my wife she would need to deal with it, and sat down a bit more frazzled at my desk.
After checking my email and social networking, I quietly went to get my plate of dinner and eat in front of the tv for a few minutes, when my son decided to get out his fake little "vacuum," a toy which loudly pops plastic balls as you wheel it around. He ran past me with it a few times when I, calmly as I could though I felt like I was about to snap, asked him to stop. He didn't, and I asked more firmly, calling for some support from my wife in the kitchen. She didn't hear me, so I grabbed it from him, which threw him into an absolute crying fit, and didn't make her very happy either. And then I really did lose it.
For the sake of preserving some family privacy and personal dignity, I won't recount what I said at that point, or how I said it. But suffice it to say that my son grew even more hysterical, and my wife felt compelled to basically say that it was no use my coming home early if all I wanted was to be left alone. And she took him into his room and closed the door.
I sat stewing on the couch for half an hour or so, ashamed of myself for how I'd behaved, but also inwardly railing at the injustice of life, in some way even of God Himself, for holding out the hope of room to breathe in front of me, knowing how much of a risk it was for me to reach out for it, only to seemingly rub it in my face just how much negative space we actually have. I certainly wasn't blameless in the situation, but I hadn't asked for this to happen, or worked to make it happen. In fact, I had come home with the best of intentions. It was one of those rare instances when I almost gave myself permission to label the string of events a concerted spiritual attack, which was the only strange comfort I could locate.
I did apologize to my son and my wife before each of them went to bed. I held him as long as he would let me and told him I shouldn't have been so angry, which he was also kind enough to point out, and that I loved him. And I told my wife I was sorry and that I didn't want to excuse how I had responded in front of either of them, but at the same time I didn't understand how things had gone so wrong so quickly when I had tried my best to put myself in a better situation. She told me that my son was so eager to pull his little "vacuum" around because he was going to help mommy clean, as they had gotten in the habit of doing late Saturday night. There's no way I could have known this, but apart from her graciously accepting my apology, I felt even lower about what had happened.
It was the type of episode which seemed to play off of and remind me of so many more ongoing ways in which I personally and we as a family have had so little room to maneuver, and just can't seem to make life work: My wife is perpetually exhausted from managing two part-time jobs and a full-time toddler, and I come home physically drained from a part-time manual labor job with hardly any time or energy left over to make any real headway with what I thought was my primary calling. We barely scrape through one week, only to snap our fingers and see the next one start up with an almost scary redundancy. And we scarcely survive one budgetary crisis by the skin of our teeth only to fall right into the next one at the end of the month, or even the next week.
It's been three weeks since that ignominious night, and thankfully we (I) haven't had any blowups of that proportion. But neither has our situation changed in any tangible respect. I've had days where hope has been hard to come by and asking God to honor the promise I thought He may have given us even harder. Some days it's a bit easier to open my bible up to Psalm 18 and read back over the passage which I'd love to believe could be true for us. I sense I've grown better at trusting God to provide for some of the most basic essentials of survival, such as health and safety and the money to pay rent at the end of the month, and I don't want to take those realities for granted. But to be honest, I have a hard time trusting God that He's interested in addressing some of our other big picture needs which seem to be gradually suffocating us. I read and pray the words "He brought me out into a spacious place" because I want to and I know I should, but the hope behind them feels hollow or indefinitely postponed at best.
In so many of the psalms, David articulates such an all-consuming need and desperation to God, but still manages to include some affirmation somewhere along the way that God has heard him. Much of the time I have to really work to believe that, but I suppose even the asking is a mustard seed.
Yet I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, do not delay. (Psalm 40:17, NIV)
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