As I get going here, let me give you an update. Morgan is doing well, but has realized that even a small amount of activity has a price to be paid in increased pain. Please, don’t feel sorry for her, this is a good thing. Instead I would ask you to pray that God would use this to grow her. Don’t you wish that you could’ve learned and embraced those kinds of lessons when you were 13 or 14? I sure do.
Pray for me too, regarding this. I want to minister to her and be compassionate, without trying to “make everything alright” because only God can do that. I want her to reach out to Him for those things that her daddy and I cannot do for her. We can give her pain medicine, help make her comfortable, and minister to her, but we cannot make her well, physically, emotionally, or spiritually; only He can. Pray for her to see His sufficiency and for her daddy and me to be His tools in drawing her to Him through this. Our praise is that things are going as expected regarding her healing and we are sooooo thankful that there have been no complications! Truly praise the Lord for that!
I also have another update for you regarding my husband’s quest for employment. We were disappointed on Thursday evening to receive a letter informing him that he did not get the position with the company he interviewed with last week. He had an interview with another company this week and did not get that job either. I will be honest and say that I was/am disappointed, VERY. It has been 11 months since he got laid off. I’ve only been concerned about him not having a job for about 8 months, because I had figured that the Lord would’ve provided something by then. Well, God has taken me FAR beyond my time table comfort zone. I have vacillated between trust and despondency through this time, but HE compels me to return quickly to trust (truly it is HIM doing this in me).
I hope it doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable or sorry for me that I am struggling; I am learning to not be ashamed for having these very human feelings. I am currently doing a study on sorrow. Yeh, I know it sounds so uplifting, but the truth is…it is. The book and study guide are written by the musician, Michael Card. The book is called A Sacred Sorrow. I bought it more than 3 years ago, but couldn’t muster up the courage to start reading it until a few weeks ago. Basically, the book is showing us how God uses sorrow, which the book calls lament, to draw us closer to Him. Ouch! Not what we want to hear is it? He points out that the Bible is full of laments and the book will be exploring the sorrow and lamenting of Job, David, Jeremiah and Jesus. I’ve just finished the introductory sections, the first four chapters. I couldn’t even begin to summarize it sufficiently, but let me see if I can give you a piece of it to help you understand what God is doing in me. Hopefully, it will encourage you and bless you where God has you right now.
The author, Michael Card, points out how we have been “shushed” in our crying and sorrow from the time we were babies. We don’t really even give ourselves permission to “cry it out”, but instead feel like we are stronger emotionally, morally, physically, and even spiritually if we can just get our emotions under control and stuff them. I mean, we do let ourselves cry a little. We allow people to grieve for a short while, but we expect ourselves and others to pull it together and get on with life. Where is the scriptural basis for that?
The truth is the scriptures are full of lamenting. I’m going to quote the book here from chapter 2 a section called A Harmful Silence (p.20). “Contained somewhere in the heart of these demands to ‘be quiet,’ beneath the sincere attempts at comforting, lay a level of shame and the inescapable message that we should not cry out, we should not behave in such ways; that wanting the comfort of presence and the assurance of (His loving kindness) were really somehow selfish. At that frustrating moment we entered into the very human, fallen aspect of denial, which is the polar opposite of lament.”
I hope I can adequately convey that the bottom line is that the enemy has convinced us that to keep quiet and deny our true feelings of sorrow so that he can get us to live in the false state of denial. You know we’ve all been told that we just need to accept our circumstances or have faith that God will change things or at least use them for good. While those things are true, they often gloss over the pain associated with loss (whatever the loss may be). But God doesn’t ask us to live in denial. And what about Hebrews 11:39 “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.” Do we honestly think that as we read the whole chapter of Hebrews 11 that these people didn’t ever wonder if they were really loved by God when they were being persecuted and the very thing they were told to do did not bring about the results they desired? Do we think that they always felt God’s Presence? Read Job and the Psalms and you will know differently. They did dare to ask, “God where are YOU?” That’s honesty.
He wants a real relationship with us which requires us to be real about our feelings. “If you listen closely enough to the laments of Scripture you will always hear an echo, like the sound of a voice bounding from the wall of a vast empty cathedral. That echo is caused by the emptiness that only comes from a perceived absence of God’s Presence…What torments Job most is not his losses, not even the physical pain he experiences, but the fact that God’s Presence seems to be absent. In the end Job’s troubles are solved NOT by getting back his possessions, nor the children he lost. In the end, Job gets God back.” (A Sacred Sorrow workbook p. 20)
fill me with joy in your presence
Psalm 16:11
Do not cast me from Your presence
Psalm 51:11
Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?
Psalm 10:1
God has forgotten;
He covers His face and never sees
Psalm 10:11
Why, O LORD, do
You reject me and
hide Your face from me?
Psalm 88:14
Jesus lamented, “Why have You forsaken Me?”
“In one way or another it is the theme of all lament. It is the confused cry of all who struggle to live in a fallen world where God’s perceived absence is the real heart of our battle. It is the opposite of the retreat of denial. Lament is the battle cry! … We learn from lament that nothing less than the restored Presence of God will ever satisfy our souls.” (wkbk. p. 20)
Well, maybe I’ve made this too long. Maybe I haven’t been able to let you see how it is that my LORD is sustaining me and drawing me to Him in the midst of my trouble and sorrow. I pray that you will understand. I pray that we will all have the courage to enter into lament with Him, to enter into real worship, to enter in deep relationship with HIM. So, maybe this has the preamble to my declaration.
And now my Declaration of Dependence:
I am no longer my own, but Yours.
Put me to what You will, rank me with whom You will.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for You or laid aside for You,
exalted for You or brought low for You.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to Your pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
You art mine, and I am Yours.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.
I was introduce to this prayer at Betty Heath’s memorial service a few weeks ago and it seemed to put into words the way that God has been compelling me to live over the past 15 years that He has been pursuing me hard. I cannot do anything without Him and so I declare that I am not my own and that I live in complete and utter dependence on Him. I cannot change our circumstances, but I can trust the One who can. And even if He doesn’t (as He has chosen not to in many situations, not just this current jobless present we live in), I choose to trust Him, I choose to believe, and I pray that He will be glorified in even this broken, lamenting (but not despairing) me.
Sole Deo Gloria,
WP Stacey
That really sounds like a great book—can’t wait to read it someday. Thanks for sharing about it as you're able.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite passage has always been Lamentations 3:19-33—it’s the hope at the end of 2.5 chapters of heavy lamenting (hence the name of the book!) I’ve fought chronic pain and its accompanying depression and despair for most of my life...lots of tears and sorrow. I don’t know how people get through it without Psalms, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other books of grief and hope. I’m SO glad we have those examples of godly saints despairing of this life so we know it’s ok!
I just wish we could tolerate our foster children’s lamentations better...angry screaming and wailing is SO unpleasant to be around day in and day out, but of course it comes out of a soul that’s been traumatized by loss, confusion, frustration, helplessness, and grief. I’ve been praying for the compassion and mercy of Christ but just find myself tired and irritated again and again (along with the other 7 people here :( There is someone crying in our home just about every hour of every day and that just baffles me—how can that be good?! Can't wait to hear what Card has to say about the "rejoice always" command!
(Oh and thanks for trying to soothe B today when we “lost” her at the picnic—wish she was comfortable asking for a cell phone to call us when she’s in a panic like that! We're usually just around the corner, but when you have a huge church with lots of corners, a phone can come in handy :)
Thanks for your blog Stacey. I wanted to share with you about the camping trip we went on this past weekend at Lynx Lake near Prescott. I took my daughter Emily and four of my grandchildren Ella, Ryan, Joshua and Aden and last but not least Segar Amy's huge rottweiler pup. We brought the dog for protection and also brought a gun as well.
ReplyDeleteFriday night we put away all the food, took the garbage away and saw the leftover dog food had been taken over by ants so we left it out. Around 2am Segar starts barking and growling. I could here this biss biss biss sounds. Segar and I peeked out a small portion of the unzipped tent. The skunks tails were straight up as they ate the dog food. I told the dog shhhh. God please shhhhhhh. The dog was quiet. I picked up some kindling and tossed it at the direction of the skunks and they took off. AND without spraying us. How vulnerable we were in that tent. So I put Segar in the SUV to protect her and us from getting sprayed. I just praise God for his protection. We had a wonderful time hiking and fishing and being together.
This experience reminds me in Romans 8:36 of how we as Christians are like sheep for the slaughter but God is our protector. I must say I begged for mercy in that tent the other night. And my creator, my God, my love, my protector, my king...........heard me. Me he heard me. The creator of the whole universe was in those woods with me the other night.
And showed mercy. Thank you Lord!