Present Tense

I have spent the past week in a state of wild oscillation. Much of the time I am confident that good sense will prevail, but too often I have been angry, fearful, tearful, impatient. Elwood is completely unruffled by the whole thing. He thinks I need to get a grip.

And maybe I do. After I posted yesterday about the effect this is having on my kids, I thought, "Maybe I'm part of the reason they're upset. Maybe if I weren't so upset about it myself, they wouldn't be as worried." Some of it I can't help, because I have been put together as a sensitive person. But some of it I can.

My best pal in town lives right around the corner. I had been pining to talk to her about this CPS mess but she was out of town for a week. Yesterday I went to her house for a cup of tea and a long talk, and came home feeling fortified. I pulled out my guitar and a couple of Bibles and started singing the end of Romans 8. I kept singing while I was cooking dinner and cutting the kids' hair afterward. There's something soul-settling in belting out "If God be for us, who can stand against us?" at the top of your lungs.

It vexes me that the caseworker said this would be formally resolved by the middle of the week at the latest, and yet I have heard nothing. It seems to me that it would take him 30 seconds to say, "I'm totally swamped with an emergency case but I'll get back to you as soon as I can." But no. I have been stewing all week about his refusal to take my calls and his failure to return my messages. I am resolving to stew no longer.

Last night I was playing around with phrasing, trying to get that "conquer overwhelmingly" bit of Romans 8 to fit the tune I'd come up with, when something struck me. I was singing,"We will conquer," but that's not right. It's present tense, not future: we conquer now. I've been thinking about that.

The single most important thing for me to do in this situation is to allow God to use it to bring our family closer to heaven. The most likely outcome is an unfounded determination. If that doesn't happen, we hire a lawyer to make it happen on appeal. (I have to think that a good lawyer would have a field day with this case.) I can't do anything about that right now. I cannot conquer bureaucracy; I cannot make the caseworker move faster. But I can seize this opportunity to conquer some of the things holding me back from heaven: petulance, impatience, anxiety. I can do that today, in the present tense.

Comments

[Arwen]

CJ, you are such an inspiration. I pray that I may have the grace to handle the conflicts of my life as faithfully.