The easy days…
Over Easter weekend, God showed me more of himself through simply calling me home.
Once upon a time, going to God was easy. Not in a habitual thoughtless routine, but a time I really anticipated. I used to wake up with ease, think of God immediately, and say, “Good morning God, I’m ready to walk with you.” The treasured the comfortability with which I could be with God, my familiarity with his presence, and my eagerness to call on his name. Once, a friend asked me about that ease and shared that sometimes I would get up and put a chair next to me, or sit up in bed to talk to God. I felt his embrace easily, and if I didn’t, I made gestures in the physical that reminded me that I was talking with my dearest friend.
Slowly but surely, that became more difficult. I’ll share more about why in other posts over time, but I think this is common. Loved ones experience unthinkable traumas that seem utterly meaningless; heartbreak, disappointment, and real pain of life begin to seep in, and sitting with God becomes more difficult. And I’ve been wrestling with these things for years. Reading books on suffering, asking for prayer, trying to make sense of the things that seem so deeply wounding yet simultaneously senseless.
From misdiagnosis to diagnosis…
But I realize I have misdiagnosed the problem. I thought I couldn’t wrap my head around the reality that, “all [our] days [our] work is pain and grief; even at night [the] mind does not rest. This too is meaningless,” (Ecclesiastes 2:23). I thought this was the classic struggle with the brokenness of the world. While that was the problem at one time, more recently, it hasn’t been the root. It has been one over my own brokenness. Sitting with God over time became less and less about the things I didn’t understand. In fact, He’d been gracious enough to break into many of my doubts and questions, in really direct ways.
What I’ve struggled to move through, is how these hard moments had broken my heart. Sitting with God now meant feeling the weight of everything even more deeply. The sadness, the grief, the disappointment. The practices I used to have, journaling my prayers, listening to worship music, saying “Good morning” to God each morning, were not practices that doubt cast out, but, rather, practices that forced me to confront the swelling throngs of grief that lay within the quiet of my first moments of becoming awake.
I’ve had two problems. First, “Who has the time?!” That has been my attitude. While going to the gym; going to therapy and growing in really deep ways that I believe God still gifted me; moving to a new state; finishing a Ph.D. and starting a new job; being a newlywed. Who. Has. The. Time?! I did not want to start every day with an honest reflection on the state of my heart. With tears, and with my deepest pains. The second problem is that I have wanted the gifts God had given me of breaking through my doubts and answering some questions my heart had wrestled with, to be enough. The fact that immediately sitting in the presence of God made me want to cry felt like saying He hadn’t done enough, He hadn’t said enough, and He wasn’t enough for me. And I now know that’s a, seemingly reverent, lie. And I know that to be a lie because it has driven me away from God. Away from His word. Away from His presence. When the truth of God, sharper than a two-edged sword, always draws us to Himself.
After years of this, I finally felt God call me home. Now. With all the tears. With all the grief. I don’t really have any more questions and so I thought that meant I should be fine, but my heart has been made sick from hopes deferred, from hurts that He wants to heal with His presence, not just by slapping me with intellectual truths. I know what is true. I believe He will use all things for my good and His glory. I know that the pain we experience is a testament to our need for a Savior and a perfect Kingdom. He has wrought that in me over some painful wilderness years. What I really need is to go home. Be with God in whatever state, and let him nurse my heart back to health.
Home is a place where both tears and laughter can flow freely; where you can let out a deep exhale; a soft place to land, and a place of preparation and gathering strength for whatever is outside the door.
I share this because I’m pretty sure I’m far from alone in this struggle. We live in a culture that swings between over-intellectualizing difficult experiences and living in the depths of our emotional states. I would argue that as people of faith, we tend to do the former, vilifying any feelings that don’t just subside with the truth of a Bible verse. Yes, I believe in preaching to ourselves, yes, I believe in meditating on His Word. But Jesus, the Word, gave us the Spirit to dwell within us to witness to us. And further, He is “the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction…” (2 Cor 1:3-5, we’ll explore the rest of these verses in another post). We can expect comfort from God himself, through His presence.
Comfort is not just an idea or word. To me, comfort is a word we often associate with home. So, when I think about Him calling me home (and what it might mean for you to be called home, too), I’m struck by the promise of His comfort. Home is a place where both tears and laughter can flow freely; where you can let out a deep exhale; a soft place to land, and a place of preparation and gathering strength for whatever is outside the door. These things make up home. And even further than that, these comforts of home are such because they’re personal, specific to you. Thus, the God who made us, the one who knew us from before the beginning of the world, has a comfort to offer that is more perfect than any other comfort we could seek!
So, after a long season of avoiding God, I have been pushing myself to go home to Him. No matter where you are in the process of grieving, it is better to be in the arms of the Father.
Scriptural Meditations
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.
Psalm 34:18
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!
John 11:33-36