Just Frigging Enter. Rest & Pray, too.




With a word, God could make it all better.  Does He even need to say the word?  Could He not just think it?  Yet, He stays off in the distance, at arm's length.  What does He wait for?  Doesn't He know how bad it is?  How the heart aches and the spirit pleads for peace?

Being sinned against causes pain.  A decision shatters dreams.  Separation from those loved stills aches.  Trudging thru the mess can become exhausting.  Yet, He waits.

If Francis Chan is right, then God wants to change me more than my circumstance.  Great.  What is He trying to do?  I thought He loved me?

While I sit, moaning quietly in the still blackness, there is a Whisper, "Call her."  And I do. She suggests that I be kind to myself and even kinder to others while I am hurting.  Sounds annoying and frankly too difficult, but she loves me so I will try. 

Waking the next day, still feeling the pangs of disconnect from God, there is a Whisper, "Encourage her."  Tho this woman has been frustrating, actually the sound of her voice has been grating on me, I do.  And it helps me not want to throw things at her (so much).

Later there is a Whisper, "Rest."  So I take a nap.  I get up able to make better choices.

It annoys me when a friend asks me if I have prayed about the situation.  Is she nuts?  I have been asking God repeatedly to tell me what His deal is!  Crying out, "What is taking so frigging long?!  What good is it to try to follow the rules if life sucks?!"

She scolds me that I shouldn't have said "frigging" to the holy God of the universe, but what occurs to me is that it really has nothing to do with following the rules (even not saying "frigging" to God).  I am not good without Him.  Nothing is good without Him.  Rules create expectations of stuff.  God doesn't owe me anything.  Grace is everything.

Then she tells me maybe I ought to try to really pray.  I know I gave her a "look" because the subject was quickly changed.  Perhaps I am a little cranky, but did she really think I wasn't?  Well, maybe I haven't been, maybe the best I have been able to do is ask my friends to talk to Dad with me.  Maybe the best I have been able to do is cry at His feet and unload the pain.  Pain that makes all the arrogance and skills and intellect I have into mere foolish, worldly distractions.  Maybe all of me has come to nothing and I can only wait for Him to hear my cries how a mother will not ignore the cries of her newborn. 

And maybe He did hear me.

With each day the idea became more persistent that maybe He is with me, caring for me after all.

And maybe He really doesn't need to say the word because He whispers.


As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
Psalm 42:1 NIV

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