When peace is a distant memory

Photo by Ann Voskamp

Sometimes I wonder, if this is how love feels, what would His anger feel like? Life seems an insurmountable pile of trials thrown together like dirty laundry, and you will never complete it all. If suffering is to be our food for the rest of life, are we willing? Oh, to skip back to the naïveté of childhood, before I realized the weight of this life.

How do you roll the crushing boulder off your broken frame? What could possibly give me leverage in this mire? I keep counting blessings, as if to make a rope ladder up from the pit out of these gifts numbered. But it is slogging work, to push away the dross of each day to hunt for the few jewels. Life is hard, times are bad, and it seems too much to bear.

Guilt piles up heavy as well. Every time the dark thoughts collide inside, more wounds are created, in me, in these children, in my husband who so tenderly supports and comforts me. How can I keep doing this to the ones I love? If it were up to self-control, if I could fix these broken places myself, I would have, a thousand times over. The problem is, I can only rely on the One stronger than I to heal me, and instinct makes me push Him away, as He seems, too, the source of my pain. By His allowing it feels as though He gives His consent. How can He not rise as my shield and make the sun shine upon my soul for a season? Does He really think I am strong enough to survive all of this?

Today I am to be at a women's conference, but I cannot drive, I cannot think, and I cannot be in a group of women - anathema to an introvert's bleeding heart. It would be like walking back into the fire the day you get out of the hospital with your old burns still weeping. I cannot make myself participate.

Oh, how I beg for deliverance.

Grace.

Peace.

Healing.

When will my Lord hear and comfort me?

Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for mine help. Draw out also the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute me: say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. (Psalm 35:1-3)