Have you ever been smacked out of life’s ring, which you were dominating, by a shocking swing that you never saw coming? Suddenly sidelined? A hold that threatens to choke you out?
Your good life interrupted by a jolting tragedy or glaring loss.
On the outside, it might just mean eating more food, sweet or salty, watching more television, going to bed earlier, staying in bed later, working out harder, and just going without stopping. Forever building your to-do list so it never ends because what happens when you have to be still again?
On the inside, you have no capacity to care. For anyone. Let alone you. Raw. Exhausted. It’s like someone is slow burning your insides. Like bubbling lava, dripping, dripping, dripping with molten pain.
Falling into bed at the end of the day drained and wasted but then unable to sleep.
This thing, this life interruption and gagging pain, threatens your very existence. Locked into a struggle that you didn’t want nor did you expect, and your very being is at stake.
Dreams and hopes have disintegrated in your hands and all you knew to be true seems less than true now. You’re faced with two options: struggle or give up.
To not struggle is to allow something sacred within to die, but to struggle means more pain and an acceptance of this life interruption that you had no choice in.
Hurt beyond anything you’ve ever felt before. I’m there.
Staring into the faces of people passed on the street, wondering how they survived their own personal, life-numbing tragedies.
In this pain, I don’t want to be touched. Least of all by the God of the Universe who is supposed to be all-powerful and all-loving. If he loved me, then why didn’t he stop it? If he’s truly all-powerful, then he could have. Why didn’t he?
I curl into my pain and away from my God.
And yet, he reaches his arms tight around me with his chest pressed against my back, I feel his heartbeat warm and rhythmic. Constant. His heart won’t stop because he doesn’t die.
I hold my pain close, and the Lord holds me, lifting me from the desert-fire place and carrying me out. I heartache in his arms unable to do anything but whimper.
It would be easier to walk away from me, but he doesn’t.
“and in the wilderness. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.” Deuteronomy 1:31 (NIV)
God’s love relentlessly pursues into the deepest dark that we’ve ever been in.
When I don’t think life could take me lower, it does. One heartache after another, until I wonder if living makes sense anymore. Even there. In a darkness that feels too thick for breath. God is with me. Emmanuel. God with us.
“If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.”
But STILL: If he loved me, then why didn’t he stop that agony? If he’s truly all-powerful, then he could have. Why didn’t he?
I don’t know.
However, what I do know:
the God of the Universe human-sacrificed his wholly-God and wholly-human son for all of our screwed up, broken lives. That death-conquering life offered us Eternal Relationship with the Eternal Good God.
After that, all other good is just extra.
Just extra.
To the God of Desert Rescues,
who carries in his strong arms my whole life, past to future, and the anguish of broken dreams, cradle me tighter because I am weakened from this heart torment.
I’ve clutched at your promises and written hope with teeth-gritted trust, but this loss has ravaged me. My fingers slip and my jaw loosens. If you don’t come to my rescue, I will somersault into the black abyss and never come out.
You hear this heart-mewl loud even when my lips are sealed, and you come. I praise you because you meet me with gentleness, and when you lift me, your touch doesn’t jar my fractured bones. Your long-suffering love waits for me.
