The truth is that everything feels pretty sucky right now.
I am always honest in my blog posts, but I also worry that as I strive to find meaning and joy in the midst of suffering, I don't show you all that sometimes I can't find it. Right now I feel crushed with sadness. Right now I want so desperately to hear my mama's voice that my chest literally aches. Right now, I feel so physically weak and beat up that it's hard to hold my petite little baby. I am wracked with worry over how me being sick and Grammie being gone is affecting my boys. I am sick to my stomach with guilt over how very little I'm able to contribute to my marriage. I don't feel brave, and right now I don't feel up for the fight, even though I know there is no way that I will give up.
I write all this not to induce you all to encourage me, because you have all been such an encouragement to me already. I cannot number the times that I have felt lost and defeated and God has used someone's words or actions to find me and pick me up. I write this so that you all can know that when I feel like the truth is that everything sucks, I actually know that something else is really true.
You see, God knows that I think this sucks, for I can say to him, "O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord...Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your prescence? If I go up to the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of sea, even there you hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast" (Psalm 139:1-10).
I feel as though I am adrift on the far side of the sea--actually more like way down under the crushing water. But God's hand has not left me. He, who knows my thoughts and my ways, never abandones me when things serioulsy suck...He just guides me and holds me fast.
If you are feeling beaten up and far from joy, please know that the truth is...you are absolutely surrounded by the author of joy, and I believe we will be able to see outside of our sorrow soon.
