For the Days When You Feel Like You're Sinking...
There are days when you feel like the walls are going to close in on you and suck you down, collapsing into the mess of life.
January, this month of unending sickness it stretches on. Just when you feel like you're coming out of it, the waves come crashing again and again, and if you're not careful, you could get sucked into the rip current of life and pulled out to sea. Flailing and floundering until you feel that you've got no strength left to swim.
I was telling a friend at church on Sunday that I thought that we were coming out of it. The sick subsiding from this house like the ocean tide, receding back to the depths where it belongs. I walked in the door from saying that only moments earlier to find my six year old running, hand over mouth, to the toilet to vomit.
Awesome.
Then the next morning, awakening to another child sick with a fever and oh, is this ever going to end?
I could feel it, the self pity rising like the tide coming in, seeking to smother me like so much seaweed tossed on its currents.
How do you hold on when you feel like you're being sucked out to sea on the currents of life, flailing?
When you feel like a single parent with six kids who does this all alone, because your husband works hard and long every day to just make ends meet, to feed us, and then goes to church to do ministry and comes home and just collapses into exhaustion and you are the only one to fight this tide alone?
How do you you swim against this stream of trials, this sucking self-pity, this stream of never ending...struggle?
How do you swim when you feel like you can't even float?
I remember.
I remember the days that He's been my life raft in that stormy sea.
I remember that season of our life when, in a matter of months, we we lost our farm house, and we moved into that small apartment with, then, four little kids and my husband lost his job, and when we almost lost our one month old son to RSV. When I was apartment bound with those four little kids for three months, not being able to leave those walls even to go to church because the doctors said the baby recovering from RSV couldn't go out at all and I was his food source, so, there I sat, looking at those four walls, with those four little kids, and my husband traveling out of town often, and in that moment I had a choice.
I could sink under those currents of overwhelming life or I could praise Him in the storm.
I chose the praising.
Because in that moment, when you have nothing in your life to exalt, He is still worthy to be exalted.
He is still good, and He is still God.
And every day I did this one thing, I just thanked Him and praised Him for the blessings in my life and for who He is.
Because even if you've got nothing, you still have Jesus, and He really is all you need. It sounds too cliche but the truth is that it is often not until He is all you have, that you finally realize that He is enough. He always has been enough.
This act of sacrificial praise, of thankfulness, it began to do something. To fill me with joy, His joy.
And the Word tells me that it's the joy of the Lord that is to be my strength.
Because as you praise, as you get your eyes off your mess and onto His majesty, the joy of His life fills you with Him, and in Him there is fullness of joy, all the time joy.
And this is what I remember today.
I remember what I need to do.
I choose the praising.
I remember how He has rescued, how He has held me, like David, who said "He reached down from on high and took hold of me, he drew me out of deep waters." Psalm 18:16
I remember how he drew me out of deep waters and I know that He will do it again.
I remember that it is His joy that strengthens me and I find His joy in praising and exalting Him.
Because He is worthy, He is faithful, and His love never ends.
January, this month of unending sickness it stretches on. Just when you feel like you're coming out of it, the waves come crashing again and again, and if you're not careful, you could get sucked into the rip current of life and pulled out to sea. Flailing and floundering until you feel that you've got no strength left to swim.
I was telling a friend at church on Sunday that I thought that we were coming out of it. The sick subsiding from this house like the ocean tide, receding back to the depths where it belongs. I walked in the door from saying that only moments earlier to find my six year old running, hand over mouth, to the toilet to vomit.
Awesome.
Then the next morning, awakening to another child sick with a fever and oh, is this ever going to end?
I could feel it, the self pity rising like the tide coming in, seeking to smother me like so much seaweed tossed on its currents.
How do you hold on when you feel like you're being sucked out to sea on the currents of life, flailing?
When you feel like a single parent with six kids who does this all alone, because your husband works hard and long every day to just make ends meet, to feed us, and then goes to church to do ministry and comes home and just collapses into exhaustion and you are the only one to fight this tide alone?
How do you you swim against this stream of trials, this sucking self-pity, this stream of never ending...struggle?
How do you swim when you feel like you can't even float?
I remember.
I remember the days that He's been my life raft in that stormy sea.
I remember that season of our life when, in a matter of months, we we lost our farm house, and we moved into that small apartment with, then, four little kids and my husband lost his job, and when we almost lost our one month old son to RSV. When I was apartment bound with those four little kids for three months, not being able to leave those walls even to go to church because the doctors said the baby recovering from RSV couldn't go out at all and I was his food source, so, there I sat, looking at those four walls, with those four little kids, and my husband traveling out of town often, and in that moment I had a choice.
I could sink under those currents of overwhelming life or I could praise Him in the storm.
I chose the praising.
Because in that moment, when you have nothing in your life to exalt, He is still worthy to be exalted.
He is still good, and He is still God.
And every day I did this one thing, I just thanked Him and praised Him for the blessings in my life and for who He is.
Because even if you've got nothing, you still have Jesus, and He really is all you need. It sounds too cliche but the truth is that it is often not until He is all you have, that you finally realize that He is enough. He always has been enough.
This act of sacrificial praise, of thankfulness, it began to do something. To fill me with joy, His joy.
And the Word tells me that it's the joy of the Lord that is to be my strength.
Because as you praise, as you get your eyes off your mess and onto His majesty, the joy of His life fills you with Him, and in Him there is fullness of joy, all the time joy.
And this is what I remember today.
I remember what I need to do.
I choose the praising.
I remember how He has rescued, how He has held me, like David, who said "He reached down from on high and took hold of me, he drew me out of deep waters." Psalm 18:16
I remember how he drew me out of deep waters and I know that He will do it again.
I remember that it is His joy that strengthens me and I find His joy in praising and exalting Him.
Because He is worthy, He is faithful, and His love never ends.
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