Wow. So I am standing on the 'Brink of Total Despair' today and I read this article. I know there are many who wonder what in the world is wrong with me. I am sure that an answer like, "Oh, my very best friend that I have known since I was born just got hit by a giant freakish dragonfly and won't be around much longer.", would actually make sense. The real answer is a bit boring actually. The real reason I have been on the verge of drowning for the past year is all about having a baby.
Okay okay. Settle down. Yes, I know women have babies all the time. I know that in Utah you know at least, oh, enough women to fill a Walmart parking lot on a Saturday night that are pregnant and enough to fill another with the ones that just had babies. Ya, I know, my story isn't original, and I like original. Oh Well.
So, I am reading this article and it lifts me up enough to get my shoes on and go for a walk. I pretty much stalk out of my house with quite a little attitude. By the time I am walking back home I am slightly sweaty, slightly pink, and slightly happy. Happy is a miracle. Even slightly.
Sometimes a walk feels impossible. It feels like there is absolutely no way I can stand up and walk out the door. There may as well be an iron grate covering my front door with heavy lock on it, and I don't have the key.
So, here is a part of what I read today: "At one moment, we are filled with the Spirit, we see the grand horizon, we tearfully promise God that we will give all we have and are to him. Yet, there is often a slow, grinding down in our lives. What we feel in the morning has been pounded out of us by the afternoon. What we resolve on Sunday, we forget on Tuesday. The world is too much with us. We are weary. Sometimes our hope is dimmed. The thing we wanted very most, is the thing we don’t receive. The effort, which cost us much and at one time seemed to promise so much, ends in failure. The child of our hopes and dreams disappoints us or rejects our teachings.
We can be true and hopeful when prayers are answered and the crops come in, but what about when we kneel in need and seem to hear only the echo of our own voice?
Sometimes in our life we face trials, clearly identified and difficult--death, sickness, financial reversal, the abuse of a family member. But, often just as trying, is the long, tedious, wearing down of every day. The job that needs to be constantly redone. The relentless undoing of our dreams. All the things that work away at us may dim our intentions. We mean to be steady, like a river, and instead we dry up under pressure like a river in Arabia.
Many moments of our life we may just feel dead inside, dead like autumn leaves that blow randomly along a gutter. We cry out to the Lord, “Breathe life into me.”
Oh baby. Sometimes God gives me the key to that iron grate I have in my head. Sometimes he unlocks something for me so I can make it one more day. Grace is what I wanted. Grace is what I still need to learn. So I say, along with those parking lots full of women, "Carry on my sisters. One more day."
To read the entire article:
I have been voyaging across the ocean this summer trying to prove that the earth is indeed round. We have experienced rough seas and strong headwinds along the way but we are now closing in on the horizon. This will be my last regular entry. By my calculations, one week from today, we will have dropped of the edge of the earth.
