Come to me, I will give you rest

There's been a huge upheaval in my family's life this week. For a couple days I felt like someone had beat me up on the inside, I was hurting so much. And if my hurting was bad, my husband's was even worse.

My devotional yesterday was based on this verse: Matt 11:28: Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 

I was very burdened, and I needed a perspective to make sense of what happened. I wanted to God to come sit next to me and soothe me, as if we were old friends sitting on these rocking chairs, sharing our hearts. 

Here's what happened. Since an interesting conversation with God at church in November, I have been slowly collecting signs from Him that obstacles to homeschooling my girls will be overcome so that I can start teaching them in the fall.

In January my boss offered me a full time job. I was flattered, but immediately realized this was a test: what about homeschooling? I told him I'd think about it and get back to him.

My husband was excited about me getting a full time job, much more than he was excited about me homeschooling. But we prayed about it, and he came up with this: well, it's not worth it for you to take this job unless it's good compensation. So he advised me to go back to my boss with a certain salary figure.

My boss said he'd consider the salary of other people in my department, along with my experience, and get back to me. After several weeks, he came back with a figure lower than I'd asked for (but still high enough that it was still tempting).

However, the grant money for this position hadn't come through yet, so I had an excuse to put off the decision and pray some more about it.

A few days later, I told my husband I wanted to turn it down and homeschool. He supported my decision. But my boss was out of town, so I didn't tell him my decision.

The very next day, God overthrew all our plans completely. My husband was very unexpectedly laid off from his job.  We were both devastated.

I found it interesting though that this happened after I had made my decision about my job, but before I had a chance to finalize it.

For some reason, God wants me to work more instead of spend more time with my kids, homeschooling them.  It might be that as important as my kids are, my husband needs to be higher priority right now. This might be (everything is still up in the air, but this is what we're praying about), my husband's time to finally go back to school and finish his degree.

Anyway, this devotional based on the "rest" of Matt 11:28 has provided some balm to my worried soul. It's excerpted from Lysa Terkuerst's Made to Crave devotional.

The gift of rest Jesus is offering here is not spiritual Ambien. The Greek word is anapauo which means “of calm and patient expectation.” In other words, Jesus is saying “If you come to me, I will take your exhaustion in this area and turn it into expectation. IN this place you feel hopeless, I can make you hopeful.” 

What’s the difference between the words “rest” and “resist”? The difference is “I”. I can’t do this. I can’t make lasting changes. I don’t see how the Bible can really help with this struggle. 

We can find anapauo rest – fresh hope – when we stop resisting God’s truths and start applying them.

God is changing my confusion and hopelessness about the loss of my husband's job to patient expectation, through trusting in Him.