Real Life Meets Real God

Yesterday was tough:  busy schedule, heart-bruising conversation with someone close, crowded roads, endless demands and finally headache and mind-numbing fatigue.  Nothing new here, sad to say.  It’s an age-old joke - the weariness of women and the headache that goes with it. 

In the quiet sunlight this morning, this thought came:  What if the weariness comes from taking up burdens and carrying them on my back all day as I try to go about my business.  Fear, self-reproach, disappointment, anger, shame – they are all like heavy rocks in my pack and not very conducive to leaping up to the high places! 

Then my heart cries out to my Father God.  I see my foolishness so clearly this morning as I never did as I staggered through yesterday.  Why didn’t I run to Him and lay all these rocks down at His feet?  Placed there, they could become an altar for my wounded pride, my self-sufficiency to die upon once more.  Once again, I know the truth – Apart from Him, I can do nothing. 

So why do I so often shrink back from drawing near? 

Because… I'm mad at Him.  For allowing all this pain.  For not fixing it all years ago.  I look around and everyone else looks so much closer to “done” in God’s oven.  They look golden brown and ready.  I feel like mush.  My soul screams, “Why?”  Why does it have to be like this?  Why this road?  Why these problems?  Why? 

And now, I need to go find a secret place and pour out the anguish of my soul.  Now, I’m on my knees and undone.  It is pain, but it is a good pain because instead of a pain that sits like a rock on soul, it is a pain that pours out and leaves behind the absence of heaviness, something that feels like peace.  In this place, He asks me a question.  Why is not important here.  The question is this:  “Will you trust Me?”

I weep on Jesus’ feet and know that He was here before me.  I look at the pain, poured out all around me, and I look at Him.  I know Him to be faithful.  I know Him to be good.  I look in my heart and I know that I believe He will keep His promises.  He will make it all right.  He will even make all the pain worth it. 

Of course I will trust Him.  In the fits and starts of my slow-to-learn heart, I will trust Him.  For me there is no choice.  He is Life and Light and though I do not understand His ways, I trust Him and His Love – for me, for the ones I love and for all the souls who cry out “Why?”.