In a letter I wrote you not long after you passed away, I told you about a country song I could relate to that opens with the line, "Sunny days seem to hurt the most..." I don't know if it's because the days of deep, dark grief have passed or not, but I now find myself saddest not when the skies are full of sunshine, but rather on the days when it seems as if the Heaven's are weeping with me over all that we lost.
I've struggled with my anxiety lately. There are times when it seems as if our happy ending is just too good to be true, and I feel as though I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think back to a time not long ago when it seemed Ryan and I were on top of the world, only for us to have the rug pulled out from under us one day. I wonder if my heart can take something like that again.
Last week, I had a situation that I was particularly anxious over. That evening, as I anxiously prayed that God would give me a peace about the situation, the sun came out just as it stopped raining. I immediately began looking for a physical sign in the sky to let me know that God had heard my prayers, but my rainbow never appeared. A few days later, I was anxious about another situation and prayed a similar prayer. Almost instantly, Morris' song (How Great is Our God) came on the radio, and I felt peace.
These two experiences have left me wondering...why does God let us struggle with things sometimes? Like He did for me in the second situation, He could so easily give us the peace we are asking for, calm our minds and hearts, and help us make the decisions with which we are wrestling. For some reason though, He sometimes appears silent in the midst of our anxiety and fear.
As I've thought about my situations last week, I've realized that in the second situation where I felt the immediate peace, I laid the situation in God's lap and left it there. I trusted as I prayed that God would hear my prayers. In the first situation, the truth is that even as I prayed for peace, I held on tight to the situation. I didn't trust that God had a plan, or more specifically, that he had the "right" plan. My faith was much weaker because I was intently focused on my fear. I wonder if maybe God was just waiting on me to let go of the situation and fully trust Him before he revealed His plan to me.
I know that anxiety will always be a struggle for me, but I hope that I can learn to let go of the fear more often and have faith in happy endings. If Disney has taught me anything, it's that happy endings always come after a lot of ups and downs. More importantly, a quote I came across reminded me of this little nugget of truth, "God only makes happy endings. If it's not happy, it's not the end."
Love,
Mommy
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