Help-meet??

I read a book a while back about being a husband's "Help-meet" as I guess is the appropriate translation of the Genesis account of what a woman was created to be. Tonight, I just feel a little bit overwhelmed by that task and am reminded that it is in God alone that true comfort, help and restoration is found.

My husband is struggling tonight with frustration, guilt and shame for a small financial situation we've found ourselves in. Like so many Americans, the downturn of the real estate market has effected so many, including my little family in these walls tonight. We, like many others, are possibly going to lose a house, hopefully to a short-sale, but certainly to something, and it is currently at an unknown cost to our current home and/or assets. It is not in this realization that my husband has found his frustration tonight, but in the factual, grueling hardship letter that had to be composed detailing the downfall.

Although I am not a man, I understand that financial provision is up there among most men's "must-do" lists and I can assume that any litany of my negative decisions and actions typed out in Times Roman for all the world to see would be humiliating and overwhelming.

I lack the ability to cheer him up tonight, and he went to bed quite solemn and exasperated.

I am reminded of a story in Tina Fey's (not-very-Christian) book (that I found greatly enjoyable!): Bossypants. She recounts the story of her mother watching two small Greek children while their parents went to a wedding. The baby cried non-stop in the playpen the ENTIRE time the parents were gone, and after hours and hours of this torture, the 7-year-old brother couldn't take it anymore. He eventually burst and yelled out in Greek (which Tina Fey's mother understood) something along the lines of, "What will come of us!!???" Privy to the situation in the scope of the human existence, their situation was not very horrific, and Fey's mom ran to the kitchen to hide her laughter at this situation.

Although her connection was not spiritual, I agreed with her point: many times in life, we are that small, 7-year-old boy, running around thinking the entire world is crashing down on us in a not-so-tragic situation. I believe this must at times be what God sees of us--running and scrambling and crying out in frustration, anger or shame at the situation we have found ourselves in, when really, He is with us. He is in control.

I am grateful that whatever situation we find ourselves in, just by aligning ourselves in Him, we are never removed from God's presence, love and plan for our life.