Sunday is my favorite. Really. I love waking up knowing my family and I get to go to the house of the Lord on Sunday. I rejoice in the thought of fellowshipping with my church family, singing the old hymns, and, yes, listening to the preaching of God’s word. As a bonus, I get to see my husband all dressed up, AND sit next to him. Well most of the time I get to sit next to him: When the kids let me. After church, is almost as good. Our family enjoys one of our few meals together, and the conversation is spurred by the scriptures we heard earlier. As the afternoon wears on to our only lazy day we take in our needed rest and relaxation. Sometimes we even take naps! Yep, Sundays are my favorite.

Sunday nights, not so much. Once our evening church service is over the work for the coming week interrupts our serene household like an uninvited and unwanted houseguest. It is not that our family despises hard work. As former farmers we enjoy working with our hands, laboring long hours, and overcoming obstacles with ingenuity. We rarely look at difficult jobs with downcast hearts. Unkept yards, disorganized houses, piles of just about any kind of material (I mentioned we used to be farmers, right?) do not deter us. Actually, I hate piles of paperwork, but aside from that, difficult jobs energize us. 

But, Sunday nights. Ugh.

Picture this recent scene from a Sunday night in our household. I had just completed every task that demanded my attention before retiring for the night. My husband was tucking the kids into bed. I should have continued my course, and finished my nightly preparations for sleeping. Instead I parted the clothes in our closet, sat down on a large plastic storage container, and began praying. 

You may be getting visions of Priscilla Shirer’s prayer closet from War Room. That’s sweet, but no. First of all, my closet is full to the brim. My hope was actually to hide for a few minutes. Hence the necessity to part the clothes and pull them back in front of me. Besides, I wasn’t just praying. I was a forty year old woman hiding in her closet and crying like a toddler told to go take a nap. I just didn’t want to. I didn’t want to face the next day, let alone the next week. I definitely don’t got this one. 

Before you judge me to have the maturity of a toddler with  the emotional stability of a teenage drama queen, let me explain some things I don’t got. 

First, and foremost, my oldest son is battling a severe flare up of Crohn’s disease. My 5’10 twenty-one year old son know weighs as much as his 5’2 seventeen year old sister. And, no she is not big boned, out of shape, or (as our family prefers to call it) plump. Anyone who has battled an autoimmune disease knows there are prescription medicines that can readily be presercibed that MAY help their symptoms. For Crohn’s the long term options are immune suppersors and biologics. Immune suppressors are not a great option for persons living on a college campus, and I don’t think I can even begin to explain what biologics do. Either way you are left with no promises of good health. Hence our son’s decision to battle his disease with diet and lifestyle. He initially experienced a lot of success with this choice, but a year back at college with minimal food choices and plenty of stress has thrown his body to a resistant to treatment flare up. And as his mother, I have a front row seat to his pain and suffering, feel the responsibility fo being his health advocate, and am desparately trying to get nutrition into his malnutritioned body.  

But, troubles never come without friends. In other health woes, my oldest daughter is suffering chronic ear infections from wisdom teeth that we were decisively told would not cause her any problems. In case,  you have not experienced an ear infection lately, they are painful. I was kind of hoping by seventeen we would be done with ear infections for her. 

No add two other younger children to this mix that I have had their share of illnesses in the last month (everything from throat infections to stomach bugs), and one may get an idea why I wanted to hide in my closet and cry.

But, we have extended family issues. I have a brother who is a heroine addict. His addiction brings on all kinds of other issues with other family members. We have a family memeber with a traumatic brain injury that is having a very long road to recovery.

Finally, all of the above must be borne while my husband puts in about 80 hours per week. While he is valiantly trying to keep up with all our financial obligations I am left to take on all of the above. And so much more. While some may be used to this amount of separation from their spouse, I am not. This particular employment arrangement has only been the case for this last year. I am used to my husband being within a few minutes drive away. Now he is sometimes 300 miles away. 

I admit. I feel rather pathetic about hiding in a closet to cry, but everything had started to overwhelm me. But, I was not alone in that closet, because I was crying out to my Savior, Jesus Christ. And, as He always does, He met me there. He did not instantly remove all my problems, but He reminded me I would not face them alone because He has promised, “I will never thee, nor forsake thee” ( Hebrews 13:5). 

Somehow I got through the next week. Not that it went much better. My oldest son is arguably worse off than before. But, something did click for me as I was reading through my Bible the other day. My reading guide had brought me to Job (no I did not choose that book). As most know, Job had more catastrophes fall on him in one day than most have fall on them in a lifetime. Given this, it stands to reason one might find something of comfort for troubled times in this poetic book. And comfort I found in Chapter 5, verses 7-9

“Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward” (7). Oh yeah, we got trouble.

“I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause” (8). Been doing that one, Lord.

“Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvelous things without number” (9). Hmm. Yes, well I might have forgotten that part.

Here was my remedy. It was not a promise that God would fix everything the way I want it. It was a reminder that my God does amazing things. Things that are beyond my understanding. Things that are so numerous and awesome that I forget they are miraculous. It was time to focus on the greatness of God and all the marvelous things He has done.

Here I was forgetting that I don’t have to got this. God has got this. God has got all of this. God did not need me when He spoke the  universe into existence. I was not consulted as He designed, and then carried through His great plan of salvation throughout the span of history. I only existed as a thought of His mind when He rose from the dead. I could not even take credit for choosing to be in the right place at the right time to hear of His saving grace. It was only by His divine direction, and His merciful call on my lost soul that I was saved from a life of sin and its eternal consequences. Then there are the countless wonderful things God has done for me since my salvation. 

So the next time you feel like hiding in your closet to cry, go ahead. I won’t judge, and neither will God. 

But when you are done crying remember God does have whatever sent you to the closet. We were never meant to solve our own problems anyways. You may not have this one, so why not give it to the One with nail-scarred hands? He is just waiting for you to hand it over. 

“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. Casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you” (I Peter 5:7).