It’s 12:47 am and I have to be up in about five hours, but I felt the need to write this right now. I’m tired and I want to go to bed, but something said this needed to be done, so here I am.
I just finished uploading the biggest part of my grade in my current online class around ten minutes ago. It was a paper I entitled Truth or Fiction: The Fibonacci Sequence. Uploading this paper meant that this class (which I have loathed – umm, hello, math) has only one week left. Uploading this paper meant that the one thing I could do well in this course would be done. Math is not my friend, but I am really good at research and compiling it into a paper.
The problem, however, is that it was due at 11:59 pm on Sunday, April 21, 2019. My paper uploaded at 12:32 am on Monday, April 22, 2019.
It wasn’t that the paper wasn’t done. Oh, believe me, it was done. The school websites didn’t want to load quickly, and some of them wouldn’t load at all. I thought it might be my internet connection, but I didn’t have that problem with other webpages, so it had to have been on the school’s end. Once the page I needed to upload my paper to loaded, it didn’t want to upload my paper. And then it said my paper wasn’t a file. And then the file I uploaded disappeared completely from the page. Finally it uploaded correctly and I was able to turn it in. Hopefully I won’t lose points for something that was out of my control. I tried for nearly an hour to upload my document before succeeding. *Update – I did not lose points.
Believe it or not, this little fiasco was the icing on the cake of my night. As I sat down (a few hours before) to finish up my paper and turn it in, a sudden wave of discouragement hit me. I messaged my two best friends to let them know what was going on so they could pray for me. To be honest, I sent it to one and then took screenshots of the messages and sent it to the other one, because I didn’t want to risk running out of time to work on my paper.
I listed six things that were making me feel discouraged – the final one being, “And I don’t want to finish writing this paper.” Three of the other five were the issues that my three daughters are struggling with right now. As a mom, I sometimes feel powerless to help them through some of these struggles, but when I’m not feeling discouraged, I know that that is just the voice of my overwhelmed mind. I can’t fix them, but I can help them. It just won’t all be solved overnight. Some of them might take more than a year.
One of the other two is knowing we need a new rental – now – and I have yet to find one. I have been looking for months. I viewed one last Thursday that I really liked, but the landlord had several people to show it to, and I am waiting to hear back. I am supposed to view another tomorrow, but I have to view it within my work hours. Someone was going to pick up a couple hours of my shift so I could go look at the apartment within the allotted timeframe, but something came up and they are no longer able to cover it.
The other one is something I won’t go into detail on. Suffice it to say that parts of my life are still under control – to a degree – of someone I don’t want them under the control of. Their control is very limited, but sometimes it feels like more than it truly is.
Once I was able to list these things out, I felt immensely better. It was also easier to go to God and ask for help for these things, as the causes of my discouragement were now very clear in my mind. I also knew my friends would be there in prayer for me.
So why the urgency in sharing all of this? Because it’s too easy to live social media lives that have little to do with our real ones. It’s easy to type pretty words and talk about how faithful God is when things are going well. And although I can share with you things I have dealt with in the past, I find it’s easier to be seen as a real human with real problems if I can share with you the things I’m struggling with now.
This is not a plea for sympathy. This is merely reassurance that I am you. Not exactly you, but I have issues too. Issues that are quite overwhelming sometimes. The shoes I wear are not always attractive, and they are definitely not always comfortable. But I still believe that God is here and He hears me. He knows my past, my present, and my future, and He is in control. Although all I can see are a bunch of strangely colored puzzle pieces that don’t seem to go together at all, He can see the big picture on the puzzle box, and He knows how to put it all in place.
Five hours ago, I wanted to lay down and give up. But now, with less than five hours until my alarm wakes me up to start a new day, I am confident. Not in myself and my abilities, but in knowing that because of Him, I can face another day with grace and peace.
Always Misty Mc 