One of Those Days

It’s one of those days.  I feel quiet, tired, sad and anxious.  I am so lonely, yet all I want is to be alone.  I miss my partner so much.  I miss having someone to help me figure things out, to reassure me that it’s going to be ok and to hold me close.   Days like today I find myself still screaming at God, “I don’t want to do this.  I can’t do this anymore.”  

You’ve been there.  You’ve had one of those days.  The wave comes, turns you upside down while your will to survive is waning.  For a moment you consider just letting this breath be your last.   There are no easy answers.  It’s not just one thing.  It’s not that you haven’t prayed or read your Bible.  So what IS IT?  Why are some days ok and others flatten you like a steamroller?  

Is it hard to imagine that I am so familiar with this feeling?  You hear me saying lots of hopeful things and writing words of faith.  And let me assure you, I do this because I need them, not because I feel them.  On days like today, after the tears have flowed freely, this is all I know.  If I don’t reach my hand above the water and grab onto the lifeline of truth, I will gladly and sadly sink to the bottom of this ocean of sorrow.  I stop and ask the Holy Spirit to dive down into this dark hole and show me something new, deliver some fresh hope.

Sunday morning I saw a scripture I have heard and read many times in my life.  You have probably heard it, too….most likely read at a funeral or in a sermon about heaven.  “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has imagined what God has planned for those who love Him.”  (I Cor. 2:9) Something in my gut told me to look it up and read what was around it, to dig a little deeper.  As I read aloud, I was startled to learn that it’s not referring to heaven at all!  It is talking about God’s design and plan for us right here, right now, in this life on this earth.

Life is complicated.  Life is unsure and full of trouble, but each of us have been designed and created with a purpose and plan.  When the hard stuff happens the world undoubtedly will tell us how we should feel and react.  We should be stressed, worried, defeated, exhausted, angry, bitter, depressed.  Sound familiar?  We have a right to those feelings and reactions - they are only natural.  But here’s the thing….we have not been given a spirit of the world, WE have been given the Spirit of Christ.  And because we have the Spirit of Christ dwelling within us, we actually have supernatural vision into the mysteries of life and a divine hope in the express purpose of every circumstance we walk through.  

These circumstances?  Well….they are not circumstantial.  Your whole story, the good, the bad, the shameful, the terrible, the disappointments, the losses, the frustrations, are all essential to your story, to you becoming the you God designed and fulfilling the calling and destiny He created for you.  They are all being knit together into something you cannot possibly imagine, something great that will have enormous impact in the kingdom of God, such enormous impact that you or I cannot even begin to imagine.  When God is allowed to be the author, EVERY story is a story of redemption.  Salvation does not just mean that we are saved from the fires of hell in the next life, but that we are saved through the fires of hell of THIS life.  

While I sit here under the weight of sadness, the God of salvation is working, conquering, overcoming and redeeming.  He is making a way.  He has already made it.  When I see nothing for which to be hopeful, no solid ground on which to stand, I am reminded that my ability to see it, hear it or imagine it has no impact on God’s ability to prepare it, deliver it and execute it.  I may not see it, hear it or imagine it, but I believe He does have something prepared.  Why?  Because I love Him….and because He said so.