Space for God

I started reading Space for God by Don Postema on the bike today. I had rescued it from a free books table at church last Sunday, recognizing the cover from the bookshelves at my parent’s house. The idea of making space for God seems to be a theme for me lately. So I am mulling over some of the mustier spaces inside, tip-toeing around with my hands behind my back. And all that quiet wandering in the depths has brought me to the years my husband and I spent expecting children.

I realize as I write this that I have many friends who are still struggling in the deep darkness of infertility or postponed hopes of children based on life circumstance. I also know there are many friends who will never be able to relate to my confessions about the expecting years. That is okay. I still feel that there is a little word working its way to the surface and it must find its way through honesty with myself about those years.

There seems to be a space for God opened up inside me lately that appeared unreachable in the years that we were hoping for and tending to babies. It is not that God was far away. I can remember the warmth and safety of resting in the shadow of his wing. And I did my share of hovering in prayer around the gates of heaven, shouting suggestions, slipping little notes through the grates, using sign language, and sometimes resting against the wall in exhaustion. He was not far. But I was distracted – foggy with expectation, and the fatigue that comes from wringing my hands in the dark.

My brain was full –
Wishing
Planning
Grieving
Hoping
Making lists
Buying things
Praying
Comparing
Judging
Looking around
Talking
Reading
Wondering

Impatient
Anxious

Sometimes happy
Or blue
Or green with envy
Or gray. Like charcoal.

Filling out papers
Grieving some more
Traveling
Returning
Rocking
Singing
Trying to remember that my husband married a girl he liked. Not a young and frazzled mother.

For all these reasons, I remembered today as I listened to the words rising off the page, that I don’t miss the space that I have forfeited by our choice to be done bearing children. But thinking about the space that seems to be opening up now leads me to a string of questions that I think will have relevance for other seasons of life which bring along storms of distraction, worry and hope.

Could I have done it differently?
Could I have left more space for God?
Did he feel shutout by my tears, lists and all that shouting at him I did?
Or was I as open as a bleeding heart is able?

Looking back into that fog, I do not feel his judgment or condemnation. I remember him as a loving, faithful Father. But I do wonder how he remembers me?

“Be still before the Lord…” Psalm 37:7