Now, have you ever had one of those days when your 2 year old is throwing a temper tantrum and while dealing with that, you burned breakfast? Maybe at that exact moment, your 5 year old is yelling your name from another room. You know, the kind of scream that makes your heart sink, and you instinctive realize that they are hurt. At the very second you rush to their aid (now trying to ignore that tantrum of your toddler, and the charcoal remains of your meal) the phone rings. It is suddenly so loud, and you feel you may explode. You are still hurrying to help your child when you bump a glass of milk, knocking it over, and it splashes everywhere. How do you respond in this scenario? Do you feel overwhelmed? Is anger welling up from within? Do you drop to the ground, scoop up the hurt child and just start sobbing because it all seems like too much?
I have been dealing with a lot lately. It seems like every day is the latter of the two scenarios. It isn't just the small glass of spilled milk that makes me want to drop to my knees in prayer and weep. By itself, I can deal with the pain in my neck and back. I can cope with the allergies, or migraines. Normal days make the nerve pain doable. Numbness, or loss of balance and falling, are each things I can accept. We still have some unanswered questions from Mayo. All the waiting and the unknown causes me to ponder various options and outcomes, the "might-bes" and "could-have-beens" often late at night when I am not able to sleep because of pain.
My life isn't special or unique. The majority of us deal with hundreds of small things on a daily basis. We all have to decide how we respond to the overturned glass of milk. We all have moments when we want to just curl into a ball and cry. I just started reading a new devotional book that encourages prayer and the reading of the Psalms. Thousands of years ago, King David felt sorrow over many things too. The Psalms are both a raw expression of emotion, and an encouragement from our Lord at the same time.
Psalm 77 is titled in the ESV as "In the Day of Trouble I Seek the Lord" and begins in verse 1 with:
"I cry aloud to God,
aloud to God, and he will hear me."
It has rained several times recently. The dark and dreary days feels as if they go on forever. They make me feel sad and like not doing anything. On the longest of days, when everything I am dealing with seems to occur at the exact same moment, and I don't think I can go on....I cry aloud to God, and He hears me. In the darkness, and in the pain....I cry aloud to God, and He hears me. On sunny days, when life seems ok, and all I am dealing with is one glass of spilled milk.....I cry aloud to God, and He hears me.
I want you to know you are not alone, even when you feel like it. On days when you feel like you can't go on, or when the rain just won't stop, God has promised His people that He hears their cries. Our feelings betray us. The devil would like us to believe we cannot go on, and that we are alone. He tries to separate us from right fellowship with God and His people. We cannot trust our feelings and perceptions, but we can trust God's Word.
There is someone else besides you and me that knew this very well, that is Jesus. Isaiah 53:3-5 tells us that:
"He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."
Jesus knows sorrow and grief. He can empathize with whatever we are going through, and will help us to endure it (1 Corinthians 10:13). He knows far greater sorrow than we can ever know. As he prepared to go to the cross, he cried out in prayer to God the Father, and asked that this cup might be taken from him. Yet, Jesus knew he must go forward. He must go to the cross, to his death. Jesus knows the cup cannot be taken from him, and he prays for God's will to be done, and trusts Him fully to accomplish His plans. Jesus took our sins upon himself at the cross, with the result being his separation from God (Matthew 27). In those moments, Jesus knew a far greater pain than we are going through.
Some days it is easy to dismiss all of this by saying, "Yeah, but Jesus is God, of course he could do it. I really can't handle all of this." You are correct, you cannot. Jesus trusted God, and so must we. Will we do so perfectly? No, but we make a choice to trust God, and His Word. We ask him for help, and cry aloud to Him. We can know He will hear us, even when our minds tell us He will never listen. The truth is, we frequently have to deal with more than we can handle, but never more than God can handle. If we will turn to Him in faith and repentance, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and He will also extend each of us the grace we need to get through each day.
So, yes, there have been a few tears lately, a few moments of feeling alone. There are times when I hear depression knocking on my door and I am tempted to answer. In those moments, the Psalms have really helped me to grieve, while still praising God. This new book has been a great reminder to pray. I know God hears me. I am never alone.
Until Next Time~
Shari
P.S. If you are interested in the book I mentioned it is Prayers of the Bible: 366 Devotionals to Encourage Your Prayer Life by Gordon Keddie.
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