The point of drowning.

Today, I felt the panic rising. 

I've thought about this feeling that grows steadily from my gut and upward to my tear ducts, and the writer in me has looked for the word, the EXACT word, to describe it--and it is PANIC.  Low, rumbling and threatening to overtake me at any given second.

I'm not sure why, exactly.  Except that we have a lot going on, and I suppose that sometimes my fragile gate of sanity begins to leak, and without warning I am one committment, one slow driver, one child tantrum away from drowning.  Even in that kind of helplessness, I know there is a life preserver waiting to be thrown--but I so rarely like to rely on help.  I truly HATE to need.

Today was a careful dance of schedules, and out-of-the-ordinary routines.  It is the start of a busy week, and the expectation of how it will all play itself out is thick and heavy.  Mostly, it's just a crazy time of transition and shuffling for our family and I am doing it POORLY.  It is hard to be in someone else's space, it's hard to carry the weight of caring for someone else's things (particularly with four children).  Our story has yet to see a chapter in which something doesn't break or become marred (or at least seriously dirty) on a semi-daily basis, and when I factor that in to our current set of circumstances, it is like feeding field mice to the PANIC.  This makes me hyper-vigilant and short and less creative and terrible.  Today, for example, we owned squirt guns for exactly 1.4 hours until they were both irrepairably damaged--this hit a nerve so very deep in my misplaced anxiety over things that, in reality, matter so very little at all. 

It is just a phase; but I struggle with doing things terribly.

Bottom line:  It's near impossible to settle a family *temporarily* and today, the longing for our new home and the work of surviving at our current one feels like drowning.  Apparently, I can do limbo and patience for exactly three weeks before the PANIC rises, and we have met that mark.  I had begun to think the outer edge of my faith in God's timing is 21 days--but am beginning to understand that this is where it really begins. 

Not in patient safety.

But at the point of drowning and the need for saving.

Lord, PLEASE let that life preserver look like a house contract and a 4-week closing date.  Or (as a distant second option) the patience to handle another month of waiting + greater fine-motor dexterity and emotional control on the part of my children, so as to keep the *breakage* of things to a minimum.  Amen.