When you are weary

Are you weary?  No, I don't mean tired, I mean weary.  


This afternoon I could feel the weariness in my bones.  After six years of owning a house we never planned to keep, we went to the closing of the sale of the house only to find out that someone in the buyer's camp dropped the ball and the financing may be in jeopardy.  We came home deflated.  Completely.  With yet another thing in our life that has no current resolution, it just seems much. 


Mountain Man and I were talking about this over lunch today.  When we were in college we both had this image of adult life that seemed rather, shall we say, monotonous.  We get married, go to work, and do life.  But that isn't how life has been for us, and I dare say it isn't how life has been for most people our age in America.  


As the weariness and heaviness set in this afternoon, I started thinking about the almost 10 years (next month!) I've spent with my husband. Every single year together has included a "major life transition."  Every year.  We've moved across the country away from everyone, bought a house, gutted and remodeled the house, started professional careers, and then spent two months preparing for a deployment that never happened.  All in our first 18 months.  We've battled infertility, depression, oppression, and addiction.  We bought a second house.  We got pregnant, moved internationally, had a baby, moved again, had another baby, moved internationally again, and had another baby.  I've stopped working, started working, stopped working to have babies, started working with babies, and stopped working again.  We spent 18 months pursuing an adoption that never happened.  We bought a puppy while having two in diapers.  We started homeschooling.  We are trying to bring home our children from foster care.


It feels much.  And it brings to mind this verse (from my childhood, which was memorized in KJV!):


"And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."  Galatians 6:9


We generally don't get weary when we do our own thing.  We just get bored.  We get weary in well doing.  Paul could not speak these words of encouragement to the Galatians if he had never been there himself.  Weary.  Tired.  Ready to give up.  But isn't the desire to give up a good indication that we are accomplishing the things that are greater than ourselves?


I want to give up.  I want to stop searching websites and making phone calls and submitting home studies and waiting for the phone call that never comes.  I want to stop making lesson plans and searching for deals on curriculum and reading articles on how to educate my children.  I want to stop living on a budget and paying down debt.  I want to stop having the hard conversations with my husband that keep us up at night.  I want to give up.


But when I look at the things that feel wearisome, I realize that these are the very things that God has asked me to do--rescue my children from foster care, school my kiddos, live debt-free, build intimacy with my husband.  So I take a nap, have a glass of lemonade and breathe in the promise--I WILL reap a harvest.  I just can't give up.