The Settling Years
By Guest Writer, Kara Dedert
Today’s Treasure
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:3-5
I haven’t written much. Sometimes it seems like the words have dried up and there’s nothing more to say. But more truthfully, we are adjusting to the years of intensity becoming a place we must live, not just a short season.
Darryl and I sat on the couch last night after all the kids were finally tucked in and sipped some hot peppermint tea together. Our home is full and blessed, but at the end of many days, we carry the weight of the brokenness. It’s odd, this life is such a two-sided coin. On the one hand, these years have been tremendous years of learning, growing, depending on God, and on the other, such a stripping that a deep melancholy underscores everything. We’re changed, and sometimes I don’t like it.
The first four years of Calvin’s life were nothing but bare survival, literally trying to keep him alive from one day to the next and making major decisions at every turn. The last three have been more predictable; we’ve become used to being nurses around the clock and know how to navigate his fragility well. Now, the question of Francis Shaeffer’s book often burns in our minds: How shall we then live?
How do we live when life never “gets back” to normal? What do we do in the settling years – the years when everybody else has moved on but we are still constantly adjusting to living with loss?
“The older I get,” Darryl said, “the more I see people settling in two ways. Either they become angry and bitter, resigned in their faith or they serve with love out of their brokenness.”
How many of us haven’t fallen into the first category? We grow up and face unexpected losses and life doesn’t always turn out the way we dreamed or expected. We hurt but then time happens and with it we settle into patterns of living with broken dreams.
· We either become more receptive or more hard-hearted.
· We grow in love or we grow in bitterness.
· We grow in devotion or in apathy.
The settling years. God’s comfort is enough for any sorrow, any cross you and I are called to. It is enough to keep us from hard-heartedness, bitterness and apathy. So then why do I find so much of the latter in these settling years?
The temptation for followers of Jesus, living with broken dreams and loss, is to not lean in. Instead of depending on Jesus all the more in pain, we withdraw. Instead of moving forward in faith and hope, we retreat in doubt and despair. We internalize hurt instead of dwelling in the comfort of Christ and using that to serve others no matter how broken we are. It’s gotten a lot of us, and exposes what we may have really been living for all along.
These years are uncomfortable, settling in with altered dreams. But there’s a way to resist the easy street of withdrawing into ourselves and swimming in bitterness and anger. We can ask God to fill us with His Spirit so that we can rejoice in suffering and be filled with peace in believing. Perhaps the settling years are really an invitation to develop rhythms of joy and grace in our lives? A call to live as an ordinary people with an extraordinary hope?
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:3-5
Originally posted at www.karadedert.com, Jul 10, 2019
Kara Dedert is the creator of Root and Grow, a midwest mom to five and wife to Darryl. She writes regularly on faith, special needs, parenting, and home. Her writing has been featured at Key Ministry, Live Better With Disability, Break the Parenting Mold, the Bible Study Magazine, and Fox 17.
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