This time last year

Seems to be a reflective time of year.  Watching a baby's first birthday come hurtling towards you makes you think about the past year, too.  This time last year:

• I was great with child, emotionally and physically exhausted
  
• My husband was traveling for work one week a month, finishing his first semester of grad school, and putting the finishing touches on a backyard office building that he constructed "in his spare time"
• My sweet 2-year-old was still sleeping in her crib, in diapers
• We were new in town, desperate for connection, aching for the family and friends-that-had-become-family we had left behind

This time last year I was in the pit of despair.  I have never been so lonely, felt so isolated or alone.  It was my first move since we'd had kids and that made it an entirely different sort of beast.  Never mind the pregnancy hormones that took me captive and beat my brain to a pulp.  Add to that a small town that is fiercely prideful of its own traditions and cliques of adults who have walked the gauntlet of college life together.  I felt every bit of Psalm 69:2, "I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold.  I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me."  I cried out to God for mercy, knowing I had reached the end of my endurance.

This time last year, we called three different couples to invite them to our house for New Year's Eve.  We were turned down by the first two; but God had saved the best for last.  It was this time last year that He sent a sweet family to our house that we could not possibly have had more in common with.  We were encouraged, affirmed, and reassured.  It was also about this time that another mom in town called me out of the blue "just to see how you're doing."  I wept when I hung up because someone had thought of me.  This time last year I began to see the surface of the pit.

I praise God that this year I can say "He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand." (Psalm 40:2)  In the depths of my heart, I knew that He would.  I knew He would deliver me and that the pit would grow my heart closer to His.  But that is so hard to see when you're in the pit.  Note to self - when you're on the surface, enjoying the prosperity of life as usual, scan the perimeter every now and then.  New face in the crowd?  Say hello, invite them to lunch, call them to see how they're doing.  Especially if they're pregnant.

Thank you, God, for the pit.  Thank you for pulling me out of it.  Please keep my heart sensitive to the needs of those on the perimeter.  Help me to see others who might be experiencing the pit and use me as you will to love them.