To Covenant

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Dear Younger Self, 

You are so patient. You are up all night with a sick baby and up all day with an older toddler’s futile attempt to gain the last drop of your bone dry coffers of energy. This makes you feel guilt. You chased that same toddler down the street and simultaneously waved goodbye to a bus that carried your older, yet tiny human away and wonder if the big kids on the bus will be nice today. You can’t control it. This makes you worry. You’re realizing that you can’t control much of anything right now and it makes you question your decisions to jump into marriage and kids and a life where jobs aren’t just checked off of a list in a tidy office space. 

You keep reminding yourself that marriage and family life is the most worthy cause given to humans. You ponder and take seriously your covenants. The reminders come unexpectedly at times. Close calls, the calm after big fights, brought on by lack of sleep and financial burden, long days and nights, comments from others and yourself that are either comforting or disempowering and triggering…the list seems to stack, morphing into a wall of uneven bricks stacked on your chest. You struggle to breathe. 

Then you remember your God. You remember that He is the healer of souls. So you go to Him, opening your prayer the same way you’ve done many times before and sadly many times to come: “It’s been too long, Lord..”, and you pour your soul out in a big. fat. open wound, gushing guts kind of prayer…The really vocal, ugly cry kind. 

And then it happens. Clarity of mind. The clenched shoulders release. The bricks are lifted and you can breathe. The softness of whatever you were leaning on swallows your relaxing and shaken body until all you hear and feel is stillness. Peace. 

You don’t feel rejected for the fact that you knew better than to let too much time pass, nor do you feel shamed for only coming when it’s too heavy to bear alone. 

Just pure and lovely peace…

How does He do that? Every. Time?! You will repeatedly go to Him that way for many years to come, but don’t allow too much time to pass between, don’t let those bricks stack up. It only causes you unnecessary burdens. 

You are entitled by your covenant keeping to access God’s aid and power in your life.  Access it deeply and often, as you have real need. If given the choice to walk through a desert with a camel and water or without either, who would choose to go without? 

Know that to enter a covenant with God and your husband, you can access heavenly power in your marriage and with your children every day, every hour, in every. single. thing. This power will not save you from doing the everyday tasks and won’t eliminate refining experiences that you must endure, but you will know always for what purpose you do these things for your family. 

God’s purpose is for families to walk each other home. You can do that, with His constant help, and access to His aid, one step at a time. 

Love, 

Your Future Self

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