When Everything but the Answer Disappears
I found myself taking deep breaths often.
It had been an emotional roller coaster for two months, extreme highs and lows. My faith had been tested and affirmed and tested and doubted.
Up to that point, I had never struggled with depression. I considered myself a survivor, an overcomer, an optimist. Perseverance was instinctual – like breathing, it just came.
Until one day, it just didn’t.
It was a Monday morning; the weekend had been difficult. It started on Thursday afternoon when I pleaded with the mortgage company for help. I explained that I had a job offer and was waiting on a start date. I could make a partial mortgage payment now and pay the rest with my first paycheck, but I was told there were no options until I defaulted. As I made a final desperate plea, I felt a tug at my leg. I looked down and found my six-year-old daughter staring at me, wide-eyed and scared. “Mommy, are they taking our house away?”
She heard. I should have been more careful.
With a cheery, tear-stained face, I assured her everything was just fine, just a silly misunderstanding. I sent her outside to play with her younger sister and started dinner.
It had been less than two years since the divorce, and I was still recovering financially when the Great Recession struck and left me unemployed and panicked. A single mother with two young daughters and an ex-husband with his own financial grief, I was pushed to the brink of poverty and, in addition to caring for a stroke patient twice a week and waitressing a few evenings, I was selling our furniture to pay bills. A cheap patio dining set was brought inside and set up in the kitchen, two folding lounge chairs were set up in the living room, and a wicker hamper turned upside down served as an end table. The dining room was empty and everything upstairs, except the contents of the girls’ bedroom, had been sold; I was sharing a twin bed with my youngest daughter. I felt defeated and weak and abandoned by God.
As I finished dinner preparations, the phone rang. It was the recruiter from the company that had extended a verbal job offer. A small spark of hope emerged…and then disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. She explained there had been a restructure and the verbal offer was on hold. My stomach turned and knotted at her words. I was at the end of my financial rope, had been counting on this job, had announced to everyone that I had secured a job, and now the promise of that first paycheck vanished like a vapor.
An inside voice tried, Hang in there. But I was overwhelmed with frustration and despair and fired back, I’m tired of hanging, I want some rest! My perseverance muscle was weakened from fatigue.
Friday evening, the girls left to spend the weekend with their dad. Knowing I needed to come up with the mortgage money by Tuesday, I went through the house and collected small appliances, lamps, artwork, mirrors, stemware, rugs and anything else that wasn’t nailed down. On Saturday, I crammed it all into my Honda in preparation for an early start at the flea market the next day (Facebook Marketplace wasn’t a thing yet!).
Sunday, I woke at 5:30 a.m. to a purple haze that filled the morning sky. Low on faith and high on resolve, I rolled out of bed with tired, stiff limbs that carried me down the steps and through a home I only half recognized. As I passed through the empty rooms, all I could do was cry, remembering how cozy and welcoming the house had once felt. The small cottage that had once sparkled was now lackluster and bare. I felt like a stranger in my own home.
I spent seven hours in the sun that day at the flea market and came home with two hundred dollars and a sunburned body. I watched my stuff get toted away by strangers for pennies on the dollar. Everything I had worked so hard for was gone. A reminder from somewhere hidden, It’s just stuff.
Back home, I flopped down into one of the lounge chairs in the living room, exhausted, legs aching from standing all day and hands and back sore from loading and unloading. Tears sprung from the sharp reality that I was still a thousand dollars away from what was needed to cover the bills for the month. My heart ached and my mind was numb from the pain of what was ahead. An urging with just a speck of faith, Please God, help.
An unexpected knock at my door required me to move. I turned the corner and through the glass door I recognized a familiar face, it was a woman from my church. I can’t let her see this empty house.
Embarrassment rushed in as I invited her inside. I hadn’t had any guests to the house since the furniture started disappearing, trying to keep my struggle private and out of plain sight.
She had an envelope in her hand and extended it to me. “We took up a love offering for you, there were only 42 people in church this morning, but we hope this will help you.”
I had no idea how much was in that envelope, but my knees buckled, and I folded onto a bench near the door. I wept so hard my shoulders shook. When I could, I squeaked out a “thank you” and she wrapped her arms around me, and for the first time in a very long time I felt divinely loved. Through the hands of my church family, God loved me – it felt as if God himself came to my door and stretched out his arms and hugged me, and said, “I love you.”
The amount of cash in that envelope was $1,219.51. Enough to pay all my bills through the end of the month.
A humbling experience? Yes.
An extraordinary experience? Definitely.
2 Timothy 2:13 | Even when we are too weak to have any faith left, He remains faithful to us and will help us… (TLB)
Wanna pray?
God, thank you for your faithfulness, thank you for staying by our side even when our faith dwindles to a speck of dust. We suffer great hardships in this earthly life, but even in the pain, your love doesn’t quit. When everything around us screams that you don’t care, send a sweet reminder of your presence and love.