A painful memory
I see myself on that morning. I wake up, heart full of apprehension and hope, and look out the window. It’s gray, but the important thing is that it’s not raining. Gray is fine. Rain is not fine. I know in my heart of hearts that it’s probably going to rain, but I’ve been praying for so long that it wouldn’t. Surely God will answer those prayers. Right? I don’t want to admit it to myself. If I don’t even allow the rain to take up the smallest corner of my brain, if I can deny its existence, maybe I can somehow prevent it from raining.
I go and get in the shower, focusing only on the fact that it’s not raining. I feel encouraged and slightly hopeful. Surely the fact that it’s not raining means that everything will go as planned. I get out of the shower and put on my fuzzy robe so I can peer out the window. It’s pouring. Not just misting, not even just raining. But a downpour to end all downpours.
My heart sinks - plummets, really. My eyes well over. I have been pushed aside and ignored and humiliated when I deserved praise, and this was supposed to be my reward. This was my payoff for putting up with all of that. This was when it was finally going to be about me.
My dad says if I expected it to be about me, then I got what I deserved. I just . . . I thought it worked like that sometimes. I thought if we survived uncomplainingly, if we sucked it up, we would get what we really wanted. And this was what I really wanted. Admiration instead of being ignored. A chance to shine. This was my moment. Or I thought it was supposed to be.
Not any longer.
I can see myself, standing at the window in that white robe, sobbing. I cried a lot that day.
I didn’t know then that that moment was going to change my life, shake my faith to a point from which I still have not recovered. I didn’t know that moment would be the point on which all stressful situations in the future would turn. “Can I trust God with this? Does he appear to have my best interests at heart, or is he going to pull the rug out from under me? I am not so sure anymore.”
This is something I’m processing right now, but I liked the way it turned out and thought I’d go ahead and post it. Some identifying details have been changed/are deliberately vague, and I’m not allowing comments on it as it is a little too personal.
