Though, I do realize that when I'm sick, I'm a difficult patient. I get emotional because I feel incapable and helpless, worthless because my body won't cooperate with me even though it screams "rest" loud enough for everyone and their second-cousin to hear. I get angry because I am stir-crazy and restless, and easily irritated because I want to and I just can't. I am not Superwoman. No matter how much I try and convince myself that I am and that I can, I am not. "I can't do it all", and "I don't have to do it all" are two truth-blaring, bittersweet phrases I continually fail to remind myself of. I struggle to see that in my trying-to-be-Superwoman, I am Self-reliant with a capital "S", and that leaves no room for God.
"your selfishness, your self-sufficiency, and pride, will inhibit God from His coming to live in your heart because God cannot fill what is already full." -Mother Theresa
As I am sick, I am a difficult patient. I am sick with all this sin, and I am NOT an easy patient for God to take care of and love and heal. Goodness gracious, how does he put up with me? If I had to deal with me I would have diagnosed, prescribed the anti-biotic, said "I hope you feel better", and given up.
dear reader,
God keeps us.
In all our mess and ruin, our beautifully broken, unbearably human selves, God saves and keeps us "by grace, through faith...and this is not from yourselves - it is a gift from God." This Creator not only prescribes a medicine for healing, but He gives it freely every. single. moment. And His medicine may taste bitter sometimes - it won't be a spoonful of sugar. Sometimes it is awful - it might be the traumatic downfall, the broken family, the lost relationship, the sting of death, the deeply-rooted sin pattern, the settling of depression, the cry of help, the feelings of fault and shame, the attack of anxiety.
But that can be His way of healing. It is so hard to see. How can a gracious Savior allow that? How can He let me suffer over. and over. and over?
"there is never a majestic mountain without a deep valley, and there is no birth without pain." -Daniel Crawford (Streams in the Desert, 18 August)
I believe the suffering is worth it all.
I know that there's a meaning to it all
a little resurrection every time I fall
The heavy, broken, side of life is lived and felt to its fullest extent because...God. Jesus endured every type of pain we experience. I can't not take comfort in knowing that when I feel like the only person in the world who is tasting bitter medicine, Jesus drank the bitter cup of death reserved for me.
I don't want to talk like I understand this eternal mystery, because I don't...
"my heart breaks every day in a new way - the pieces are held together by undying hope." -Ella Snyder
But this mystery casts a tiny piece of understanding when I see God working clearly in someone else's life or in my own life. The sufferings we are a part of, the things we experience, the joys and the pains, are ways of God working. They're important to tell, because they are stories of deep hurt and pain, and they mean something good.
I was at the beach for the first time today out on a jetty of big boulders, surrounded by water on three sides. It was windy and I couldn't control my whipping hair, my feet cramped up a little on the rock I stood upon and felt cool and steady underneath. The spray of water when the tide hit the rocks in front of me made it feel like it was raining. The spectrum of each wave was seaglass green and robin's egg blue, diving deeper to a richer cobalt. I could see far out till everything became nothing - till the sky met the sea and kissed it, like it was coming home. And I had a clear-as-water moment where I saw God working in amazing ways through sin and suffering. If we had no sin and suffering, we would have no reason to need God.
We need God. My Superwoman-self says "you can do it on your own", and that is Satan telling flat-out lies.
This life we live is busy and self-sufficient and independent and complicated. It's confusing and frustrating and monotonous, it's stressful and technological and success-oriented. It's built on works and acceptance, approval and ability, connections and networking. It is difficult and depressing, scary and horrifying.
But it is oh, so beautiful. It is a holy mess of everything. It is sweet to taste and freeing to live. It hits you with its moments of hard laughing, good conversation, creating, investing, taking, giving. It is beautiful in color and creatures. It is ready to let you live it. It is doing what you love, is it loving those you love, it is being loved.
and dear reader,
God keeps us.
love, cait
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