The Hard Days

Today was a hard day.  It was challenging in every way.  Nothing specific, nothing big, but all together, it made for a rough day.

I don’t like to post about the hard days, not because I’m afraid of seeming weak or imperfect, but because we (Matthew and I) do not dwell on the hard days.  We are not struggling, as a general statement.  So, if I tell you about a bad day, I don’t want it to be misinterpreted that we are having a bad time, or that we have nothing positive to write about.  It was just a difficult day.

I also wonder if some might see a post about a bad day and wonder if we’re trying to say, “look at us and all this suffering we’re doing!  For Jesus, ya’ll!”  Because that’s not it.  In fact, I don’t think our hard day would be better if we weren’t here, if we weren’t missionaries.  Hard days are universal to the human experience and part of living in a fallen world.  It would definitely be for different reasons – and telling you about the hard days can help you pray more specifically for us.

So, as the hard moments continued to pile on our shoulders today, as I sat crying in the hallway because I was completely undone at that moment and our house worker had to tell me the lunch I was heating was actually burning, I wasn’t a goner…I was just having a hard moment.  Because, I wasn’t crying about the fact that my house is awesome, the power has been great this week thus the air conditioning has been working, or that for this brief moment the baby was sleeping and the other three were getting along.  I can SEE those amazing positives and appreciate them, despite the crying.

But in that moment that necessitated tears on the floor, I was drowning, temporarily, in the stress of having forgotten to get smaller bills in time to pay our workers (because, mommy brain), or that I had to scold a worker for eating food he wasn’t invited to eat from our kitchen, or because the children HAD been fighting with each other, or because in my readiness for a Saturday break from the normal daily grind of stay-at-home mom during the week, my husband was called out to take a fellow missionary to the hospital.

I also can’t dwell on the bad days because I look around and it only takes about two milliseconds to realize that my first world problems, while they are completely valid, are really small compared to my neighbors who daily must negotiate buying food, staying healthy, and maintaining a safe place to sleep at night.

I can be stressed and annoyed by the worker who is suddenly demanding special pay, because his expressed entitlement to “my” money butt up against my cultural norm, but at the same time, how can I justify being cranky because he needs money for his children’s education and what does he have to lose by being persistent about it?  Add this to a dozen other cultural differences and the day just got more challenging.

So, as I sit here, typing all of this with one hand because Piper is fussy and hasn’t stopped crying or nursing despite all of my tricks for the last five hours and Matthew is still not home and won’t be for a while…I am ready for today to be done.  But I look forward to the new mercies promised to me in the morning, even if that means another rough day grateful for the grace I know I was showered with today, and prepared to ask for continued prayer because I know we need it, even though most of our days aren’t all that rough.