Life offers us lots of questions and very few answers. It sets before us many paths, but very few reliable directions about which path is the best for us.
We are bombarded with decisions — should I take this job? Should I quit this job?! We have endless choices — is this the college for me? Is this the guy for me? Is this the church where God wants me to be?
“Mom, do I have to get up?”
“Yes, Jennifer, you have to get up. You are the Mom!”
I would begin most days coaching myself to get up and be the grown-up I was supposed to be. But, I didn’t want to face the day because that day was probably going to be like all the yesterdays…dark, hard and long.
All throughout Scripture we see that God is not only aware of those who are hurting, but He also cares for them. From Hagar in Genesis to the lepers in the New Testament, God stoops to care and heal with His touch. Just as we see Jesus bending down to heal all throughout the gospels, He meets us too. When our hearts ache, when we feel forgotten, when we face tragedy… He is near.
“I Am” promises “I will.”
I just love that. When we know who God is, we can trust how he will respond.
The tip of his index finger feels light against my skin. He taps, blends, and smears ever so gently.
“I love you and I think you’re beautiful,” he says.
It’s yet another black eye. This one, courtesy of the six-foot-tall bedpost in our bedroom. The arrangement of the furniture in the room hadn’t changed, but evidently, my brain had. I’m older. It’s hard to remember everything all the time. Where am I walking? Which way am I turned? What wall am I facing?
So, into the bedpost I walked. Another black eye. This one, though, just seemed to heal more slowly than the ones before. Another change of aging.
As his fingertip swirls the beige putty that hides the blueish reminder of my memory lapse, I realize one thing has not changed. He loves me gently. He loves me well. He loves me in ways that no one really could imagine.
When we’re hurting, often our heads are cloudy and our hearts are so heavy we can’t bear the weight of our next decision.
We often feel stressed and fearful and disappointed. And, we don’t always feel capable of the small things we need to do — much less the big things that our soul really needs, like trusting God and praying. I know, I have been there.
When I was facing all the unknowns that go with a lumpectomy, the simplest tasks felt complicated; the most ordinary decisions seemed to take extraordinary effort.
