Reasons

There is an amazing intimacy with God that comes through no other way but suffering.
--Laura Story

It doesn't feel like it

I'm sorry, God, but it doesn't feel like I'm going to make it.  I am so far over the top right now. I feel like I am on the verge of losing control.  I am angry, overwhelmed, behind, overworked, unsupported, underpaid . Truly, the only thing I feel I have in my corner right now is You.
The people that say "we'll help you!" are gone. Certainly they can justify where they are and what they're doing, but that doesn't really help me, does it? Sick and lame.
--And now I hear, yet another one is on his way home. Also, sick and lame.  Also, seeking to be nursed back to the health that never seems to come to them.
It only comes to me.
And that is why I am responsible for everything.

Oh no you aren't! You just make a big deal of everything.
Nothing is wrong.
Nothing is wrong.
Nothing is wrong.

A phrase I am a little too familiar with.

Except something is wrong. A person with no problems doesn't feel alone and abandoned for no reason. I have a reason. They won't accept it.

Everyone looks to me. Everyone looks to me
But, it doesn't feel like I can make it.
Not this time.
Not again.

Only You are in my corner.  Would you help me? What would You do? Will I see it when it comes? Will I recognize the hand and know how to take it? Show me what you need me to do, to work with you, to pull me out of this pit.  I need you to breathe truth into me, show me how to act. 

I rely on you for breath.

The needed, the expedient

I can't do this. It's not much more complicated than that.

Why do you bring all these things to my mind, if I can't do them all? If I know I'll never get to all of them, doesn't it make more sense for you not to point them out to me? Why do you let me thrash these things around and around in my brain, if I don't have enough minutes in the day to take them on?

But, I just realized, maybe you don't.

Point them all out.

What are you protecting me from that I can't even imagine?

Concrete Obedience

I hit it again, I knock it down, I roll it on it's back.
And it's up again.

This continual struggle over and over and over.  I yield my will, and within minutes I take it back. Within minutes I'm wrestling, wrestling, wrestling it back down to the floor.

Will this ever stop? Why won't my body relax, surrender to a calming touch that I know is good?  Stop wriggling, stop resisting that Hand that only tries to soothe me, rock me, calm me.

I want what I want--and I want what He wants.  Oh wretched man!

What is this spite within me that refuses to believe, to accept, that grasping for what I want has yet to prove successful?  I am a great dreamer of ideas, but I have no follow through. When it comes to carrying on, my resolve crumbles and vanishes right before my eyes. It changes shape and exits--like a breeze out the door.

I long with everything that is within me to come to a place where my wishes to do right, can translate into action.

Concrete Obedience.

Remembering, knowing, what has happened all the other times.

And knowing what and who has always brought me true success.

Trusting Again

The thing you want me to trust you for this time, is a big one.  We just finished one of these exercises, remember? I thought we'd have ourselves a break for a little while. Apparently, that's not the case.

I just trusted you for what I thought was impossible.  Certainly for what I knew was impossible in my own strength.  I learned a lot from that, and  from what we went through together.

Yet, here I am again. 

The thing is too big this time. It's too complicated.  Surely I can't expect you to create something from nothing, can I?

Oh, wait.  That is what you do. That, in essence, is your job description.  Creator.

The Creator and the I AM.

I cast my eyes unto the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.
The Maker.
Of heaven and earth.
 I cast my eyes unto the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.
The Maker
Of heaven and earth.

Help me cross this huge gulf of disbelief and make it to the side where help lives.
And the Source of help is a kind and generous king.

Back again

I’m back at your feet, because, once again, I stand in danger of losing my mind.  I feel the pull in my body as strong as if I were on the rack. That device was used so many years ago to pull so much out of people.  It’s certainly pulling it out of me.  I want  you completely, he says.  No, I want you completely, she says. But I NEED you, he says.  But I also NEED you, she says.  And more than anything, they say:  I don’t want THEM to need you.

And what do I need? I’m once again melting into darkness. I am once again becoming a vehicle for everyone else's needs and wishes.  And all I want to do is the most dangerous thing of all—keep other people happy.  I know I can’t, but I know they can’t either—and therein lies my problem. Am I controlling, or am I simply trying to control all of us from going down in to the abyss? And does one lead to another, and back again?  I know You can help me out of this, but there are so many doors right now.  Show me the way.  Show me how to raise up from the pit, whether or not others rise up with me.  Show me that your voice should always be the loudest voice of all.

About Balance

Yesterday was easily the most beautiful day of the year.  After days of rain, the sun was out, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it felt like you could see for miles.  Most importantly, (in my little world,) it is the Fall.  There were trees lighting up all over my neighborhood in orange and gold, and the air had that crisp leafy smell.  For a person like me, who lives for autumn weather, life was good.

On the drive to work, I found myself thanking God for everything.  For the blue sky, for the colors all around me, for the fact that my car runs, (sort of!), for the fact that I was safe and for the fact that God has allowed me to have children. There’s never anything in my checkbook, but I had a roof over my head and I wasn’t hungry.  For reasons known only to God, I was bursting with happiness.

By two-o-clock that afternoon, I was leaving work and I was hot, tired and depressed.  My work was piling up, but it was plain that the check I had just gotten for it was not going to make it through the month.  I began to experience the cold, ever-present pain that comes with being scared, angry and underemployed.  And I felt myself being pulled under.

So what changed?  Not much.  Basically nothing between the time I drove to work and the time I drove home.

Except my focus.

So, what am I saying here?  Don’t worry, be happy? 

Not a chance.

If you feel badly, you feel badly.  I believe God works with that and honors it.  However, I also believe we can quickly fall into an all or nothing mentality.  It doesn’t look like I have made enough money for the month, so, therefore, the facts that I live in a breathtakingly beautiful place, that it is my favorite time of the year, that I have a roof over my head and a (slightly compromised,) car to drive, just don’t matter any more?  It’s not that simple.

It seems to me that my job---my real job---is to find a way to hold all of those things together in my hands.  To acknowledge that they can all co-exist.

It was an indescribably beautiful day and I wasn’t going hungry and I was grateful that God allowed me to have children...and I also was probably going to run out of money before the month was over.  It was okay to be happy for some things and sad for others., but, the one thing I couldn’t do was to act like my life was a complete and utter shambles because I had one problem.  I can't throw away the joy and let myself get sucked into the abyss because something in my life is wrong.

Yeah, not having enough work and not having enough money to get by are very big problems, but if my life is to have the balance that God intends it to have, I believe I have to embrace everything.  I have to cry about the bad stuff and rejoice over what is good, and acknowledge that they happen daily at the same time. To do anything less is dishonest.