Good Places to Be

 

Somewhere around mid-winter I stopped trying to convince myself that life would get easier or that I would one day enjoy right where I was on the human growth chart of stability, calm in any storm, and in knowing what loving God meant.

My literature over the winter was reading The Hunger Games series and watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I read C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters and lived on a sailboat in Florida while trying to manage a stressed out husband who was doing an intense nursing job at a busy hospital. I call that literature because it involved culture and education. Meanwhile, my youngest daughter was working on her high school work, some of which was far above my head and I would often have to avail the internet for information.

My two eldest remained at home, kept full time jobs, and entered into the world of dating both of which have recently taken a break from that too. Watching your children grow, change, and go through painful times doesn't make for very assuring moments especially when you're still trying to rat out the hard and untidy places in your own heart.

So where are these good places to be? At what point do you learn to embrace the difficult things with a brazen smile on your face? Where is this glow of Jesus I should be wearing no matter the circumstance? How long do I feel like a rootless shrub on a barren rocky slope?

I have come to discover there will always be opportunity to have a shredded heart and an overwhelmed-with-anxiety-soul. There will always be the good and the bad. And it takes a certain amount of determination to say, "It's all good", especially when the rain doesn't let up or the hail stones don't stop dropping. 

Here are some of my good places to be since this discovery... I have made a quiet corner in my room to talk to God. There I lay it all out. All of it. The good the bad the ugly. I cry for joy and praise God for hard. I say "Almighty God, I believe you and trust you for this undeniably hard thing. I choose to believe you are doing something way beyond me to redeem this circumstance or soul." 

 I tell God all the evil thoughts my brain cannot store up or sort out. I ask Him to help me to love and be loved. I ask Him questions and strategy plans for the next attack that is sure to come my way. I ask for healing on those old trained habits to think wrong and downward. I ask for healing for that big gaping hole in my heart that can only be filled properly with God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit working in tandem.

I have gardens and the lake and all of nature. Nothing clears the mind and gives you positivity like getting outside in God's creation. The truth of God can reach me when I am in this frame of mind. Being too self absorbed clouds my vision and I tend to see only the dark side while gloomy thoughts explode into mushroom shaped clouds continually hanging over my head.

I have neighbors and family and friends to love. This pouring into of others is what true love is. The redemptive love of Jesus only works through you to others if you practice it. This means to love the unlovable and the unappealing. There isn't really any way to make that an easy thing to do. My neighbor lady is laid up in bed with terminal cancer. It isn't easy to watch her suffer or her family living through it. Visiting isn't a natural thing for me because I'm introverted but it is a 'beyond me' thing to do and it encourages us both when I do.

Acceptance and committment to what is. I have come back to this so many times throughout my fairly short lifespan. When you have made a choice that is permanent, like where you live, who you marry, having children, and where you attend church, not saying all of those things are permanent, but they are bigger life choices...it is best to be all in.

It is really hard to have grace for a husband or child that is difficult if you are constantly trying to avoid conflict or conversation. It is impossible to heal your own broken soul if you aren't willing to accept that God made you sensitive and caring on purpose. sometimes your gift can feel like your curse, but recognizing that God made you you because He knew He could do things through your gift that feels like a curse...this takes acceptance and committment to do the thing God gave you to do with purpose. 

Being real and honest. This is a good place to be because it takes down whatever fake wall you hide yourself behind. It takes away all the things you medicate yourself with like food, movies, and adventure, or even spiritual things like church and functions or other good causes. Strip away all the veneer and charming things you know are more people accepted and get down to the bare bones of... What does Jesus say about you? What does God require of you? Or do I love Jesus? And how do I love my people in my life today?

Part of being real and honest is admitting the hard but not wallowing. Being real and honest before God is finding a way to grasp that God is good in every storm and to believe His purpose for allowing the pain and suffering I feel right now, is doing way more beyond what I can think or imagine. It does make it possible to smile brazenly in the eye of the storm and to send out new root growth for those unstable emotions and habitual thought patterns that have left you uprooted and insecure previously.

Here's to good places to be...no matter how unending and constant the battering you feel, trust God is doing a work. And just a few names of God I've been dwelling on lately to get through a few difficult storms of my own...

Adonai: My Lord, My God... I am in awe of what I can't see or feel right now. But I know you are God in it.

El Shaddai: God Almighty..Mighty God doing things unexplainable and not clear to me but yet I chose to trust You.

Yahweh: Creator of my beginning, present and ending...Healer of my past the present and the future.