Mountains or Palms

When I was growing up my mom used to take me places that I didn't really like to go, as I'm sure your parents did too. My most unfavorite was the 'friends' house...usually a friend of my mom's who was older and had no other children to play with, so my brother and I would have to sit quietly and ...do nothing. Sounds like great fun for 2 kids huh?! There were other places too, like the 2nd hand stores, and to the grocery store to use food stamps, not the highlights of a yount teenagers life in a small town. And while I was in that moment, they were embarrassing, non-fun, and caused anxiety. Now understand that I was not raised with rose colored glasses on, we were poor. My mom worked sometimes 3 jobs and we lived in a 2 room trailer in town, and drove a car that barely ran when it was suppose to and mostof the time without heat in the winter (in Northern Michigan). I knew that and I knew that my mom did everything she could to make our lives sufficient and as good as she could, that didn't change the fact that I was - internally- embarrassed. Unlike most of my friends, I started working at 15, the earliest possible time, to help with food and to buy my own things. And thats when my independence started, my ability to do things and work for things very hard, and .... among many other things...not ask for help. Ahh the joys of independence!!!
I've gone thru my whole life basically independent, even while married, I never really asked for 'help' in many things or situations; you can imagine the stress that has on a marriage. And lately I have been attempting to fall back on 'me' to handle and deal with the anxiety of the loss of our son, and like most things, it has not been pretty. I have been walking thru this life, lately, without direction or without knowing any direction and holding back just a little part of me in everything I do. That holding back is one of many things you learn when you grow up to early. the other part of me is just doing as much as possible and not asking for help, the part of me that is just actively trying to prove that I'm getting along, something you learn when you grow up without 'things'. And for the most part, I am surviving, but that's about it just surviving. I avoid things that I don't know what to do about, and I restrain from giving all my heart to something to avoid hurt. Yet all month I have been faced with words in a book that speak of my heart, I hear songs (both secular and spiritual) that are more than just songs but mean something to me. And everything is directing me even tho I resist. This morning I read Isa 49:11 "I will make my mountains my way." (I believe that is the King James version). And truthfully I didn't like this passage, not one bit. Because this one sentence didn't say anything except "suck it up". Really that's what it said to me this morning, and I didn't like it. Then I opened Isa 49 and read the passage before and after verse 11. From verse 9-26 it is about the restoration of Isreal. The verses before 11 talk about the time of God's favor, the time when He will answer all things and the day of salvation. How He will keep His people and they will walk beside the road and find everything they need. How His people will come out of every direction, north, south, east and west. And how, even when He is rescuing His people - a forgotten land will cry out how they were forsaken by Him. And He answered "...I will not forget you. See I have engraved you in the plams of my hands..." This is what spoke to me today; verse 11, alone, just brought to me that God in all His ability made mountains that are, right now unsurpassable. But together, I see that God is talking about salvation thru Christ and the mountains are going to be made easy passage. Still not much meaning to me, not really. But I relate to Zion, the forgotten/foresaken land. When they cried out that God has forgotten them. I don't know much about Zion except that it seems like they were believers, or Jewish, and had just not followed all the rules and they felt as tho God had foresaken them. I don't know but I can guess that Zion did their own thing; took on things independently, without asking for help; again just a guess. And in the time of salvation, they felt as tho God had forgotten them truly. That's the way I feel, and I think that's the way Lee and my friends feel too. That we have been forgotten; left to go on in life without the hope of restoration or fulfillment. So, probably like Zion (again a guess), our hearts are hardened and our emotions are tacked to our sleeves, and we go about it independently, feeling forsaken and forgotten. Then in verse 15 & 16 God answers Zion by saying "I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.." In this verse and the rest of the chapter God tells Zion of all the things He has in store for them......but not when they will get those things, just that they are there.
I don't know all of God's promises, people keep telling me there are hundreds of them throughout the bible, but I think I found one. This one "I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands..." Maybe that's all I'm suppose to know, this one promise - maybe that's all that is needed to be known and it doesn't matter if I am going on with my life independently, He know and He hasn't forgotten me, and I am engraved on His palms.