Dark Chocolate Moments

I love dark chocolate.  Savoring a morsel of truly fine dark chocolate during a moment of peace and quiet at the end of the day, is one of my favorite pleasures.   It is the interplay of bitter and sweet that makes it so good.  Life is like that too, I think.  The sweetest moments come from the interplay of bitter and sweet.  They come when God redeems something painful, or even evil, and uses it for good.   I am not good at remembering this when I am first confronted with a bitter experience.  I crave only the sweet times.  But God knows better.  He uses the bitter to help me savor the sweetness when he brings it.

The dark days preceding my divorce were very bitter.   One of the most bitter parts for me was my concern for my children.  Concern is not the right word.  Terror, perhaps?

As an educator I knew too many statistics about how many children of divorce crash and burn.  I was nevertheless unsuccessful in holding my marriage together.  The tears and pleadings I sent toward heaven for years were answered with a resounding "no" that made my heart sick with fear and dread.  My children became "children of divorce".  It took many months and a very persistent mentor to help me see that this fear was really sin.  I had to trust that God would be both powerful enough and good enough to take care of them even through the heartbreak and disruption of divorce.

In the months following the divorce my son was filled with rage.  He spewed white hot anger at me.  He even directed it back towards himself.

More than nine years have passed now.

This summer I hugged my son just before he married his fabulous sweetheart.  I gazed into his sensitive eyes; they are a medley of tan and green, gold and brown.  They fit him.   He is a medley of strength and kindness, passion and thoughtfulness.  My own eyes filled with tears of gratitude for the man he has become.    

The total sweetness for me is more than the taste of normal motherly pride.

God said "no" to my pleas for happy, idyllic growing up years for my children.  He refused to shelter them as I was desperate to do.  Instead, he used great pain and much loss to shape them into people who have insight, compassion, and depth of faith that is unusual in people so young.

God knew what he was doing through the pain in my precious children's lives, of course.  For me, to get to see it played out in them is sweet.  Deliciously bittersweet!

0 Kilobytes Available

My computer is functional, and dependable, and it has some nice features.  It also has a relatively small storage capacity, which I completely maxed out with vacation photos.   Now it is neither functional not dependable because its capacity is completely full.

I am a lot like my computer.

I do not feel either functional or dependable today.  Partly because of my computer issue, and partly because I am handling other minor stresses badly, my free capacity as been reduced to 0.  Like my computer there is an error message blinking.  It is informing me that I do not have the storage capacity necessary to run the current applications, and that I have 0 available kilobytes.  By the way, what are kilobytes?   Have you ever seen kilobytes running around the floor squeaking "Hey!  I'm here and I'm available!"?

My day is filled with tasks that seem irritatingly trivial and unimportant.  "You ought to be able to handle these little things!" I lecture myself, adding a layer of guilt to the top.  "In the past you have handled much bigger things with ease!"

Today, after my totally unproductive work day, my family needs me to do and especially to be various things for them.  My step kids need me to pick them up from school this afternoon.  They need me to be warm and friendly and helpful, They need me to tolerate noise and chaos and react well if they are mean or angry.  My husband needs me to be more relaxed, and cheerful, than I was last night.  They all need me to fix dinner.  Where am I going to find the capacity to be a good wife and stepmother and mother tonight?

I made a list of the things that are pushing me over the edge today.  I did what I could to resolve issues. The computer is now backed up and some photos are stored elsewhere.  I ate coffee ice cream with chocolate syrup, whipped cream and peanuts.  "That really should help!", I think to myself, doggedly ignoring the voice of reason in my head.

The thing is, even after eating ice cream, I don't really feel better. "I told you so!"  The reasonable voice rolls its little eyes at my stupidity.

Then I know.  I have not done the fundamental thing.  I must download and delete.  "Cast your cares on Him for He cares for you."   I need to plug in. and stay plugged in to Someone with unlimited capacity.   His life will flow through me.  He can carry my entire load with ease.  Everything.  Every single thing.