The duress under which we live – the commitments and responsibilities to others, to ourselves, to our children, our past, the uncertainty of our future – plays the antagonist on the set of the main-stage of our lives. Lately, it seems more prevalent than ever. Divorce, death of a spouse, death of a child, custody battles, depression, adjusting to parenthood as a new step-parent, unrequited love, miscarriage, and the list goes on. You really know your own strength when you are tested beyond your overwhelmed belief.
It is a lesson that drags you, kicking and screaming in defiance, to the moment when you prepare that ideological construct of surrender. You begin imagining what forfeit will taste like and how soothingly warm it will be to fade into, and if guilt will season it to ensure that it digests better. God has a way of surprising you sometimes. He can take it, proving your weakness wrong. That’s how you figure out what you are made of, and when you learn a lesson like that, it stays with you.
I have noticed my daughter will cry more often now when she sees me leave the room. This typical stage, obvious in its reasoning for an infant to want a parent, recently revealed something to me. I know when she cries that she is okay. She has everything that necessity requires and I never panic or worry. I know when I walk back into her room, she will acknowledge my return and instantly calm down. To me, this episode is small, temporary and understandable for where she is in her life at this point. To her, this is a crisis. Though I believe that children learn patterns and that she most likely knows that I am coming back for her, I have to imagine that it is a terrifying thought to witness your mom or dad walking away from you and leaving you alone somewhere, unsure if they will return.
Uncertainty surrounds our every day, and despite how complacent we find ourselves at any given stage, the truth of the matter is that it can all change in an instant. The issue is not the event, which will happen regardless of our actions, but the method in which we pick ourselves up off the bathroom floor, wipe the streams of mascara from our faces and say, “Enough is enough.” I believe grief is real and necessary in the process of healing. I also believe the grit of some events will scar us for life, carving their fragmented particles deep into our surface and making a haven to hide there.
This event does not have to define you or me or anyone. Sometimes, the biggest setback can yield the healthiest fruit, the better-lit path, the most trustworthy results. Maybe you’re making the hard choice, maybe it was made for you, or maybe it was the wrong one and you’ve already made it, trying to learn how to live with it. The most important part of loving yourself is establishing trust in who you are and what you represent to yourself and others.
Deuteronomy 31:6 says, “The Lord your God goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.”
I used to not like church. I grew up in church and loved it at a young age, but the day that I saw my home church split in two was a disheartening day for me. Opinions raged like a fire consuming everything in their paths, and I left that night in silence wondering how rational human beings ever get to the point where they attack so vehemently until the weaponry guts the body from the inside out, leaving skeletal remains and a gaping wound.
It changed my attitude and I started seeking God in other places: the smell of calculated dust in Monument Valley, Utah, the way the stars fall on Lubbock, Texas after a rainstorm, the heat dancing through the sand of Death Valley in Eastern California, the ice cold liberation of the Colorado River, the rainbows crashing into each other from a rooftop hotel lounge in Ottawa, Canada, the group of strangers you travel with who become like family, rescuing you from flailing about before you realized it yourself. I saw God in all of it. More importantly, He saw me, regardless of where I was looking.
I then learned how to release the burden of my tribulations and nail it to the cross. It’s not my burden to carry anymore. Romans 8:38-39 says, “I am convinced that . . . neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” What a powerful passage. . .
I’ll be praying for those of you tonight who are in the perpetual cycle of emotional turmoil. You are stronger than you think. It certainly is not easy, especially when endurance wears thin, but God hears you before you ever know the question.
God Bless,
Megan
Blue Withens 