the road home

I've come to realize lately that my biggest problem in life is not trusting in what I know to be true. I had to take my daughter to the ER yesterday. She was diagnosed with cellulitis in her right arm. My husband and I came home from sort of a long morning at church and then visiting my mother-in-law at the hospital, so I was tired and anxious to be home. But when my daughter raised her arm and showed me the inflammation there, I already knew what it was and my worry alarm shot straight up. I tossed down some lunch, quickly changed my clothes and tried hard to find the strength from somewhere to go back to the hospital for several more hours. I did not want to worry her, so I tried to keep a stream of funny and pleasant conversation going so she wasn't bored. After the type of eternal wait that seems to define an ER was over, the shift doctor and PA confirmed what I already was sure of but hoped it wasn't, as this is the type of thing that can be no more threatening than the common cold or cause an amputation, depending on it's course of action.

The main thing I know to be true in life, even if way too often is only in my head, is that God is my Father, my real dad, my Abba. Why can I not access Him in times like these? Would He not have been the one putting pedal to the metal just like I did if I were in sick or in trouble and He could be here in the flesh? When I went to my CR group last Friday, we were discussing step four of the 12, which is making a fearless moral inventory of yourself. I had to admit to the group, my greatest struggle is that I can't embrace God the Father with confident and open arms. I know only at a distance way too often. My heart is empty and cold. The place where I experience this love in fact is often at my Wednesday small group, among a bunch of ladies who are recovering from various types of addictions. They seem to have nothing to lose and no airs at all. The reluctance and the fear that dogs my steps so often and shows me what I really am isn't in them, and I'm so grateful to have that type of acceptance and affection. It is so healing to me.

In the last, say, three days, I've read over and over and over from different sources that we need to be as children, trusting and open, before God. I know it's not another thing on the spiritual "to do" list from God's perspective. He simply longs for that kind of trust, as any parent does. And I feel so disappointed in myself that after all this time I still hold back. Here I sit this morning after a terrible sleep, littered with nonsensical, worry-generated dreams, sick to my stomach from using cookies and cupcakes to soothe my jangled nerves from the day before. What the heck am I doing to myself? Why do I always insist on not trusting? I keep watching, like a flip book in my head, the story of the prodigal son, and I keep seeing that Father continually peering out the window, sighing through his day, alone at night telling an absent son he's loved, and then that incredible picture of the day when the boy appears on the road and the dad runs to meet him. I want that so much. I realize the son didn't earn that love, it was just there for him and he didn't see it until then. I don't want to wait. I want to be home right now.