“For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. “
~2 Corinthians 1:12~

Yesterday I was thinking that I could really use a maid. It’s been a long while since I’ve thought anything like this, where the situation I was in had nothing to do with my temperament, or time management habits, or disciplinary measures integrating kids into housework. It wasn’t for lack of trying. It was not about husband who sat around and did nothing. You hear those kinds of stories and you can’t relate at all.

This was a matter of sheer numbers. When you added up all the work, all the needs, all the time that was required to fulfill the present tasks and duties, the only thing making sense was that one person was not enough. You’ve seen it said at times, “I don’t really need a husband. What I need is a wife.” You never took the thought that far, but yes, you understood it. What you needed was a helper, a female servant like in Bible times.

I called a sister. Our sis chats have dwindled over the past several years. I was horrified thinking, “Was I the one keeping all that going?” I haven’t needed the same support. And then there are always the changing seasons, where life gets busy or people withdraw and are going through their own harder times. She didn’t answer, so I called another. We talked and then the other called back. We talked and then it too helped for a while.

But this morning I wasn’t done. I thought of another sister who I don’t usually call. Of all of them she and I are probably the least close, yet in some ways are also the most alike. I knew she’d get the part about feeling overwhelmed. I wanted to know how she was doing, how she was coping, like spiritually.

For that is how we have learned to cope–through spiritual means. And I have often tried to tell her, “Look, you can’t just keep falling back on these platitudes. You’ve got take action and responsibility. You’ve got to deal better with all the emotions.” Never once has that gone well. But there is something to the God stuff she speaks of, and I know that, and I want to hear from her.

Everyone’s hard is not the same. That’s one of the things that’s been hard for her. When your life has been hard in ways that other people’s wasn’t. Because it can feel like nobody would really get or understand you, and it can tempt you to covet the ease it looks like others have. Their money or health or time or whatever they have.

And you wonder why, like why did my life have to be hard in this way? I was telling her how you hear things like “God uses our stories”, and that “our pain is never wasted”. Who says? And how I have sometimes coped by thinking, “Okay, God can use these experiences. Because of them I will have more opportunities to help others.” But even that is not a divine guarantee. And I’ve wondered, what if it was just so God could minister to me?

Would that be enough? That God ministered to me and that was enough. For it to have been my life that God worked in. She said she thinks we minister to others by simply existing. Like that somehow our lives bear witness to God. People have come up to her randomly here and there, telling her how this or that ministered to them when she had no idea. It made sense.