Thirty-two years ago, about this time of the year, I was a freshly licensed newbie RN, working on  a Hospice/Oncology unit in the Fan District of Richmond. I was 28 and broken. Spiritually, emotionally and psychologically, the snares and cares of life in this world had brought me to a low and very dark place. I had experienced things in the previous ten years with implications that still effect me to this day. (I turned 60 on August 7th). At that rock bottom point, I had to ask God hour by hour, and even minute by minute, to get me through whatever task was in front of me. From fixing a meal to driving to work, and especially in carrying out my nurse duties.

When I arrived at work for my shift, the first thing I did after taking report from the off-going shift’s charge nurse, was walk to the restroom, get literally on my knees, and pray to God that He would get me through that shift, enable me to do my job, and especially to let me cause no harm in the emotional, physical, and psychological state I was in. I was having awful memory problems. I couldn’t keep running tabs of the steps I would need to carry out to complete a task. Turmoil of life. I had great difficulty planning anything, my mind was cluttered and disorganized. This is a state I would continue to revisit again and again in the years to come, to varying degrees each time, and it’s kinda where I am again right this moment, although hopefully it will resolve soon.

I feel, if Jesus doesn’t call us up soon, I really can’t take much more. I have prepared as much as possible. I already have suffered. I already have been through a lot of hard and painful things. So the continual admonitions of “harder times coming” on top of the fragility I feel? That’s why I no longer stay plugged into blow by blow the latest, much less can I write coherently about the facts and details.

I’ve been told, over the years on a number of occasions, in the rare times I speak about my struggles, “I would never have known you were dealing with all that, you always seem so “together”, upbeat, etc ( or some version thereof).

Particularly in an academic or professional setting, everyone has a “game face” or persona we project.  You can’t bring the personal stuff into those arenas and still function competently and professionally, or even on a basic societal level going about your personal business and all the necessary interactions with other people it requires.

That struggle is still there, though. Our concerns and weights hover underneath. Tragically most churches and too many fellow Christians expect this “game face” too.

I do not have the compartmentalization skills that some folks seem to posess. I didn’t then, and I don’t now, and that’s something that society tends to “shame”.

We’ve all seen the videos of adults having toddler-like meltdowns. Everybody has had a moment they that way, but  most people, until recent years, possessed enough self-control to refrain from actually acting it out!

Reasonable people generally assume we will eventually get a handle on life, but the truth is, just as fast as we get a handle on one set of circumstances, something shifts. Just as the playing field seems about to level out, there’s an earthquake or storm, leaving new sinkholes or mountains or fallen trees.

The walk of a Christian through this life is something we always hope to get better at, but the truth is, that’s not the way it goes. I find I only need “Jesus to take the wheel” more and more the further along I go.

I’m right back to that weak state where I gotta ask God’s help to even do the little things.

Life isn’t a process of getting stronger. It isn’t! That’s something we’d like to think, and that we tell one another, but it’s simply not true.

The new creature in Christ, and the old flesh vie for the upper hand continually. Trying to walk in God’s ways, while everything in our present environment functions according to the devil’s algorythms.

We daily exist in an “at-odds” mileu. We are like fish out of water trying to live a land-based existance, flopping our way from here to there equipped with only fins and tails while Satan’s progeny are built for the world’s terrain and seemingly have a home-turf advantage. I’m mixing a lot of metaphors here, but hopefully you understand what I’m trying to convey.

It’s human nature to want to acheive things. Even when you have limitations and your goals seem miniscule in comparison to what others are capable of, it seems like something can always happen to de-rail even the humblest of goals and wipe out any perceived progress.

When I was in my  late teens and 20’s I loved to work, and intended to be one of those folks that remain active into my 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. My how much has conspired to the contrary over those decades!

A lot of “water under the bridge” of life has come and gone. My nursing career was relatively brief before chronic pain and fatigue undermined that. I kept a toe in the water as long as I could, but eventually faced reality and let it go.

In the interim, I raised 2 boys, headed up a neighborhood watch, served various ways in church and volunteered in our kid’s schools, did some editing for Christian authors, did online selling here and there and a lot of blogging, cared for Mom,  became a grandma and have done and still do help with the grandbaby fairly often. Now I am trying really hard to downsize/simplify, sifting through the years-long accumulation that comes with staying put in the same house nearly 30 years.  I also have had covid twice this year, and I simply do not have the resiliancy to come back from the set-backs anymore. Always losing ground.

I’m running out of youth with which to compensate and recalibrate my course. For so long I have hoped to reclaim even a sliver of my old strength,and former capacities. Once again, it’s time for some letting go of hopes and expectations. I’m not speaking in the worldly sense. It’s my own personal ambitions in regards to the person I wanted to be by this stage of life, and at this point in my walk.

I never have liked this world much. I mean, I appreciate the beauty of God’s creation, but from childhood I was never about owning “stuff” and having “things”. Not materialistic. My yearnings have always been relational, and we are living in a time now, where “relationshipping” is trickier than ever in human history!

Being awake (not to be confused with being woke) is hard. I’ve been through some things. I’ve shed a lot of tears in my time, to the extent that I don’t cry easily now. There is a depth of sorrow that surpasses tears.

To say “I am so done with this life” I think there are those of you out there who know what I mean, and feel the same way, (as in “Lord Jesus, please come today”). There’s an even greater number that would take that in a very negative, escapist being-a-quitter kind of way. There’s a huge difference between being a quitter and being done, spent, all used up.

“Be about your Father’s business! Throw out the lifeline to the lost souls around you. If you can’t physically do,  support and pray for the ones who can.” I have done and still do those things. I have trouble accepting my own limitations. I have a hard time cutting myself any slack, without feeling like a total slacker. Mixed feelings? Ambiguity? Double-minded? To be double-minded is to be unstable. Check, check, check, and checkity-check!

I have gotten through the hard times and the long years by clinging to God’s promises, with expectation of that next life. I’ve said many times, this life, in this world is pretty much just a second womb. We wont be living, I mean really living life as God intendeded, until then.

While gazillionaires make arrangements to be cryogenically preserved in order that they can be re-animated and their minds be somehow transplanted into cyborg bodies in a ludicrous bid to become immortal, I can’t help but thank God for the truth He has allowed me privy to from that old holy Bible!

I need Him more than I ever have. If there’s more hard times ahead, scarcity and hunger, violence, whatever, O’ve done what I could but God’s just going to have to do the rest.

There’s so much I have yet to realize, figure out, understand, grow into. The sense of unfullfillment. The frustration of trying so hard, and falling so short. The not-fitting.  The never-finding-the sweet-spot. The yearning, the needing. It doesn’t let up. It doesn’t get easier. That light at the end of the tunnel we see in the distance? That final week before the birth? It’s the hardest part of the whole journey, and I’m feeling every bit of it.

That’s why I don’t care about the charts and dates and projections and prognostications.

I just.want.to.be.home.

And I want to express that, just once, without being told by somebody, (even old recordings playing inside my own head), to “occupy”. “Be patient”. He’ll come when it’s time”.

Even little kids do have an actual limit to their ability to endure, beyond which it is simply unreasonable for parents to ask more of them. More restraint, more waiting, more patience. Surely our heavenly parent understands!?!

I’m almost to the point of; “ok, I really wanted to experience the rapture, but if we’re still YEARS out, Lord, can I just go ahead and die?

That’s why I think it can’t be much farther. I need Him to get me through every minute, every second, every nanosecond.

I’m not the only one, neither! It’s been a long haul. It’s ok if we’re not ok, because God’s got us.self-sufficiency is waaay over-rated anyway.

Camilla Smith contributed a couple of articles  to Rapture-Ready in recent weeks, that I was so thankful to read!!  If this post resonates, I recommend reading her two articles :  “Are You Pestering Our Father?”                     &  Pestering our Father, Part Two .

Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Isaiah 40:30-31