The effects of the fall

Hello everyone.
I hope this is not out of place here. Please, please let me know if it is, and I'll be happy to have it moved elsewhere. I barely know where to begin.

I basically have two main functions now: being a mother and a housekeeper, and being the primary breadwinner for myself and two children. I am a single mother, separated from my husband, for all intents and purposes permanently. I am all but crippled with confusion, with clinical depression which I have more or less made my peace about having along for the ride, and with the... heaping baskets-full of regret for how I have comported myself in these thirty-six years of my time on this earth. There is not a whole lot that I had or thought I wanted that has not been taken away. The Lord gave, and he took away. His was the hand, and blessed be his name.

I am very familiar with the effects of the fall. Indwelling sin, which I dearly hope will be done away with for us in the millennium... I can stir up my courage for living in a world that still has others sin, so long as the flesh and my own sin is dead. I have lost to that so many times. I could deal with an ill, weak body, and with the heartache of dealing with the lost, and with the heartache of a broken world in general if not for indwelling sin.

Back on topic though: my body is weak, my mind is not the greatest anymore, and in general the brokenness that comes with the legacy of the first Adam is alive and well in myself and my little family.

It sends me running back for grace. For mercy. There are such blessings, because he who promised is faithful. But he does not let us forget. He touches us in our depth, puts this or that out of joint for us, so that we go halting with our wound. It is his mercy toward us that he does so, or we might forget ourselves and fall to our pride, and do worse. But I do anyway, so there are times I turn that sword inward and it's as though anything suspect feels the edge of it. Anything. To have a heart that is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked is to have an unknowable heart. It mostly leaves me paralyzed, bewildered, confused...

So yes. Effects of the fall. And that is just myself, not the weeds I must pluck in the little gardens of my children's hearts. And that is its own misery, Eve's curse to have sorrow in bearing children. Were it not for the mercy of God, I would despair of anything good being found in my children, because the example they have is such a broken one.

I am told that the ability to see so much of one's true nature, and to be constantly stung with it is a good thing, indicative of a heart that is tender and alive. Well and good, but it's a little like living with second-degree burns that don't heal. I did have that once. It was an acute, sleepless misery of several days until I got the right medicine for them and I was able to head off the stricture scars. Only I can tell now that it happened. I am grateful to have experienced that, so that I can say with confidence what this is like, and that to have such a sensitivity to my true self and still have to live with it and have depression is exactly that kind of anguish. So when I say I am three hundred percent done with this world and I want to go home... and then I have to immediately reel myself back in and acknowledge that it is not the Father's pleasure yet, or his time, and that means that it is good for me now to be in this body. And that his goodness toward me can be trusted, even when for all intents and purposes I feel as though I am being ground into dust.

Which isn't even the worst of it. I know it is the darkness I deal with, and I know that what I feel is not to be trusted when it gets like this. That the ground upon which I stand is solid, even if my feet are coming out from under me. Augustine said in his Confessions, 'I would rather wound myself, and be healed by him'. Though he tarry long, I must wait. We do not summon God. His tarrying is good too, and works for our good. As he gives of his blessings, and takes away, and shall yet be blessed, so he gives of his presence in degrees and is sometimes pleased to hide his face. And sometimes he is pleased that we wait long for him, so that he may show us what is in our hearts.

May the day soon come that I do not have to tremble so at what is in my heart, and when there is an end to the blindness of my eyes that I cannot see his face.

To sum up, yes, the Fall has very particular and difficult effects for me. One of them is that more often than not I do not see the light, and there are times that I do not have the strength to hope, or to believe. Which means, thankfully, I mostly don't have the energy for the theatrics of despair either. There is the wounding of it though, and as I said before, it is something I have made my peace about having to walk with. We all have our crosses, and they are particular to us, and placed upon us by a wise and loving Father. I have only to look within to see his wisdom in granting me this one.

Grace and peace, until we behold with unveiled faces.

Afterdarkness, welcome. I'm not sure, you may be a personal friend of my wife and myself--if not, you match her description perfectly. Many like you--excuse me--like us--often feel the same way. God has truly given us hope. He has brought you this far, and you will have your rest in His kingdom. From everything I can see, that day is approaching very quickly. Hold fast to the end--all WILL be made right.

Welcome, afterdarkness. I love your prayerful thoughts.