WRITTEN IN AUGUST
I looked at the cupcakes I left on the dining table yesterday and started packing them one by one into boxes. 12 hours of dedicated work all gone. It was only when I looked at the melted mass of icing and chocolate on the 'Death by Chocolate' cupcakes that tears started rolling down my cheeks and I called out to God. Suddenly my resolve was melting just as the icing had done the day before in the heat of the day. The tears fell faster and my prayer changed to questions.... but who am I to question God when He has promised to look after me. My mind became a confused puzzle and suddenly it was no longer about melted cupcakes and our loss of profits but it became about my whole life which is crashing down around me. The tears flow faster and my questions to God are increasing with every thought that is galloping through my brain. Why is this happening? Do I deserve this? Have I not given enough to my family... my friends... my community... my church? Have I lived selfishly and only for myself? The wall I have built around me for so many years is eroded quicker than it was ever built. It has become so high, higher than my head, each brick put in place by yet another hurt or another step back. The things that have been left unspoken are running through my mind and I am wondering if I had been a different person, stronger, making myself heard, more assertive, if my life would have been different today?
Looking back in time, if I had chosen to stay in the workforce instead of deciding to care for my children by staying home with them, would we be better off today? I question myself and the decisions we made but I have no regrets. I have loved being a mother to our children and a wife to my husband. I feel in my heart that taking NiQi in and giving her a home with love and security was a good choice. But could I have made the wrong choice to be a wife and mother first? Should I have gone back to work full time after our boys were born? I think of friends who were in the same position as me and I don't know their thoughts, I cannot know their pain in their loss but for me, I know that I did what I felt was right in our family situation. I am glad I stayed home. I am glad that every day Mark needed me I was there. I didn't have to worry about asking for time off from work and I could juggle my days so that I could give equal attention to all our children. Mornings were exclusively Mark's while Matthew was at school. Was home schooling NiQi through high school a bad decision for her? I would hope not and I am glad that we persevered so that she completed her "A" levels. Have I been too protective of our children? Some would say 'yes', but I think that I gave them a good spiritual grounding and the foundation for life was laid to be strong. What they do with that foundation and how they build on it, is up to them. "Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it" Proverbs 22:6 - I hold tight on this verse and believe that years of Sunday School, youth and home values will help them make 'right' choices....
but still, as my mind reels at where we are today and how hard we have worked over the years I am sad to admit defeat....
No one knows me as God knows me
No one knows the hurt I have endured.
No one knows the hurt I have endured.
No one knows the heartache I have felt at the hand of so many who have crossed my path.
Today I am more than sad, I am wretched, I am frustrated and I am vulnerable. But at the end of today I will dry off my eyes once again and pick up the pieces of my life that have become tattered and torn and I will stand tall....why? because I am a survivor..... made strong by judgement and ridicule. I am me... I am God's creation who realizes that I am not alone and my battles are already won.
