Drifting

I've been lonely lately. 

When I quit my job, I wasn't coming home to be the mom of a firstborn newborn baby.  I was coming home to a 4 year old and a 6 month old.  My days look like preschool drop offs and running errands between morning and afternoon naps.  And boxes.  Tons of boxes.  Insert shameless plug for www.renewedhealth.com.  Wink wink.

I have been trying hard not to over commit myself during this transitional phase of my life.  In doing so, I have committed to BSF and that's it.  Now don't get me wrong, I love BSF.  But there isn't a lot of space for making friends.  It's pretty down to business bible studying.

So I have been looking around to the people I already know.  It seems like everyone is already established in their friendships and their routines.  I look to this group and I feel like an outsider.  That group too.  Where is my group of people?  Who is like me?  Where can I find the friends that I so desperately need?

And so I'm drifting. 

In BSF, we have been studying Genesis.  We just finished Noah.  There have been a few things that have been fresh with this new look at Noah.  First, God provided everything Noah needed, not just food, but sacrificial animals as well so that he could continue to worship.  Second, God shut the door to the ark.  In his mercy, God didn't make Noah the responsible one to pick the time that the door should be shut and the world condemned.  Third, Noah was alone for much of his life.  It took him 120 years to build the ark.  And once the flood came, they were on the boat for over a year. 

I think about Noah drifting after the rains had stopped.  Every day drifting, alone in a world of water.  It must have been achingly lonely.  And yet Genesis 8:1 gives me hope.

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.

 

 

In the midst of my own drifting, I have to remember that God provides.  He has great mercy and love for me.  I couldn't ask for anything better to hold on to while the waves of loneliness surround me.