  Micaela’s nails dug into my calf muscles. I didn’t know whether to cry or yell or both. She hadn’t napped and hadn’t stopped wanting constant attention all day. The house was in shambles, toys and dirty dishes everywhere. For the first few months of this phase, we had respite care and I could find some emotional and mental breaks. But, when school started our amazing caregiver, Shaylee, went to college. That same week Adela started Kindergarten leaving me at home alone with a frustrated, angry, needy Micaela. I started to wonder if I was going to survive. I think I began to fall into a mild depression. My bubbly optimism vanished and my mask of happiness began to crack and dissolve. During one of the sessions where I was teaching Bible Study to adults, someone encouraged me to start listening to an online ministry, seedbed.com. The first lesson I listened to about Psalm 13, moved my soul towards healing. In this short, 6-verse David, the writer, goes from asking God how long he must suffer to praising God. The psalmist is able to do this because he clings to the memories of all the times God has saved him. I listened to the words of the devotional and let out a deep breath of relief. There was something else to focus on, something else to pay attention to—remembering how God has intervened in my life. I was lost in the torment of the moment, the horror that my life would consist of this event over and over until Micaela moved out of this phase. Those thoughts threatened to seal the lid on lost days, weeks, and months. Ah, but praise… Sometimes that old adage “Thank God for your blessings,” makes you get stuck in the rut of trying to figure out all the things that are good about this moment alone. That can be difficult—very difficult. However, if we have been walking with God long at all, we have memory upon memory of being saved by our Heavenly Father. As Micaela cried and yelled, I remembered Adela going through this exact same stage. I remember how lost I felt, how miserable. I remember worrying that I was handling it all wrong. However, God guided me through it and Adela today is turning into an amazing child that I love spending time with. God is good. Hope is powerful. Through countless hard moments and seasons of my life I am blessed to own the tagline, "But God was with her." And when I'm wading through the valleys, I know I am not alone. But God was with him Do you have memories of being saved by your loving God that give you strength during the hard days?
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