"How are You Doing?"

Almost daily someone asks me "How's it going?"  "How are the boys adjusting?"
 "Better than I expected," or "Today was a good day," are my typical and truthful responses.  So many people pray for and love our family and I'm grateful for people who care enough to ask.

However, a question I don't get quite as often is "How are you doing?"  A dear friend popped this normally casual question on me the other night after Bible study and for some reason it hit me hard.  This isn't a question I get asked often and it took my breath away.  After the week I'd had, at that moment, the typical positive responses just weren't going to cut it.  I simply got quiet, stared blankly into space, fought the tears back, and debated whether or not she was ready for and had the time to listen to the real answer.  She did take the time and I shared a tiny part of the recent struggles in our household; a  sweaty and teary battle with a certain 8-year old that ended in both of us falling asleep in the middle of the floor, for one.

We are truly blessed beyond measure and I WILL NOT complain.  However, this raising 6 kids, two with a troubled background is really hard.  That's not easy for me to say in a world where mothers struggle every day just to feed their children or worse yet, watch them die...those are the moms who are allowed to call mothering hard.   I was literally raised on the idea of if it doesn't kill you, it will make you stronger, so I tend to be one to just suck it up, deal with it and try to move on. But answering my friend's question suddenly forced me to venture into a buried place of honesty with myself.  I've been fighting the reality of my situation because I know of mothers in my very situation who have it so much worse, some even having to dissolve their adoptions. Still, the longer you are a mom and the more kids you have, the less life is about YOU.  Our family's struggle is nowhere near that of others, but it's still very difficult and I'm learning it's OK to say that out loud (or type it for the world to see.)

I don't know of anywhere in the Bible where somebody asks Jesus how He is doing, so we don't really get to see how He would respond to that question at any given time in His life. He was surrounded by thousands who were seeking Him out to meet their needs.  Not too many people were concerned about what Jesus needed from what I can tell.  I really wonder how He would answer the question, "By the way, Jesus, how are you doing?"  Jesus had needs just like us (Heb 4:15.)  He was exhausted, tired, and dare I say, discouraged.  Still, no record of anyone asking Him how He is fairing through it all.

During the last grueling week of His life He spent His nights in Bethany with His dear friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus and then headed to Jerusalem every morning to be tested by the Pharisees knowing the week was to eventually end in His torture and death.  Definitely a tougher week than I've ever had.  I wonder if these dear friends who loved Jesus ever asked,  "How are you doing?"  He must have come to them every evening worn and weary.  I wonder how He would have answered.   Would He take the time to really bear the struggles He was having with another?  We have no way of knowing, but we do know that when the time came for His heart to cry out in agony, when He was in Gethsemane,  He entrusted His pain and struggle to the One who could truly help.  When Jesus struggled, He didn't "suck it up" or go into pulling up bootstraps mode.  He trusted and cried out to His Father...the comforter of all.

I don't have a local foreign adoption support group full of people who "get it"  and offer an empathetic shoulder to cry on. But I do have God's provision.  His family to offer not always what I want, but what I need.  He is my Father and I'm learning more than I ever have to trust Him with my hurts.  After 20 years of following Him, one would think I would get that by now.

How do you think Jesus would have responded to the question "How are you doing?"