The (Brutally) Honest Truth

Just a caution, if you can't handle someone being brutally honest with where they stand with God, pretend you never saw this post.  The whole point of this blog has been to honestly share what God is doing in my life, through my struggles and triumphs.  This is one of the struggles and I'm not exactly sugar-coating it.

I cannot catch a break.  I know I've said this before to some friends and I might have even said it in a post.  I feel like every time I am doing what God led me to do in the first place, he starts loading me with more and more until I can't handle it anymore.  I have surpassed my breaking point.  A couple days ago, I was approaching it and now it feels like that invisible threshold is miles behind where I am now.  I am so angry I can barely make it from one minute to the next without showing it in some way, whether through body language, the way I talk to the people I love, or just flat-out crying for no observable reason.  I am falling apart at the seams.  

Here's what I know some of you are probably thinking right now, "God will take care of you if you let him."  The reason I know that's the Christian thought-process is because I have been coached to automatically think like that for as long as I can remember.  This type of automatic thinking just isn't cutting it.  I'm still not denying God or walking away from Him, but I have reached the point where I can't even think about Him without being angry.  I need to be able to move past the automaticity to something that is more meaningful, but I just can't get there.

What happened to put me over the edge?  One of my children picked up a stomach bug, something that I do not handle very well, especially when it happens in the middle of all the other stressors I am dealing with.  I was driving home from work and I remember just begging God to just let it be just the one child.  After all, with four kids in the house, this could easily turn into a weeks-long marathon of no sleep and cleaning up messes.  Add to that a diabetic husband, and my worry level goes through the roof.  Scott could easily end up hospitalized from something as simple as a stomach virus.  So, as I almost never do, I asked God to just take this one thing away from us.  Let us handle fevers, colds, coughs, just not a stomach virus.  I felt a release.  I felt a peace.  Two things I don't generally feel when I pray recently.  Usually I feel, well, nothing.  So, I trusted that God really would let this end with the one child.

No more than 24 hours later, another child develops the same stomach bug and my fragile trust was broken.

I can already think of dozens of arguments against my current thinking.  You might be thinking them, too.

It's just life; it's not like God is making the stomach bug go around.  But, the all-powerful God, whom I have been worshiping since I was a kid could have cut me a break on this particular round of stress because I asked.  He just didn't.

I'm just overreacting because of my current, temporary circumstances.  It goes deeper than that.  Whether it's stomach bugs or other things that just happen to go wrong, for years I have been loaded past the breaking point when I'm actively trying to follow God.

Satan is just trying to keep you from God.  So why is God letting him when our relationship is already so tenuous.

I just need to "give it up to God."  Why?  In the recent past, that seems to be the times when things get the worst.

Even if I'm thinking these things, I shouldn't publicize them.  That could make people stumble or turn people away from God.  I'm not giving up on God.  If anything, this blog is proof that I would rather struggle through my relationship with Him than give up on Him.  Maybe someone can even relate to the struggle.

Am I anywhere close to renouncing my faith?  Absolutely not.  Am I struggling with it?  Definitely.

Psalm 11 - An Epiphany about Refuge, Finally

This is the last Psalm that I read when I started reading through them back in February and I have been excited about sharing it since I started the blog.  It was an "aha" moment and I hope it brings you some insight, too.

Psalm 11 starts with the line, "in the Lord I take refuge."  If you've read any other post, you have probably heard me talk about refuge as being elusive: something I expect from God, but never really find.  It has been a source of great frustration to me to feel like I was missing something that I so desperately wanted (for more on this, see my post about Psalm 5).  So, when the word refuge came up yet again, I decided to do something of a word study to see all the times it is mentioned in the Psalms.

It's a lengthy list, so I'm only going to include the parts of the verses that relate to my "epiphany," even though that might leave out some of the context of each verse.  After all, I'll get to these Psalms later.

• Psalm 2:12 - "Blessed are all who take refuge in him."
• Psalm 5:11 - "But let all who take refuge in you be glad..."
• Psalm 7:1 - "LORD my God, I take refuge in you..."
• Psalm 9:9 - "The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble." 
• Psalm 11:1 - "In the LORD I take refuge."
• Psalm 16:1 - "Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge."
• Psalm 17:7 - "Show me the wonders of your great love, you who save by your right hand those who take refuge in you from their foes."
• Psalm 18:2 - "My God is my rock, in whom I take refuge..." 
• Psalm 31:2 - "Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me." 
• Psalm 34:8 - "Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him." 
• Psalm 36:7 - "People take refuge in the shadow of your wings." 
• Psalm 46:1 - "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." 
• Psalm 62:8 - "...for God is our refuge."
• Psalm 71:1 - "In you, LORD, I have taken refuge..."
• Psalm 91:2 - "He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust."
• Psalm 144:2 - "...my shield, in whom I take refuge..." 

According to my concordance, I found 16 places where the word "refuge" is used in the Psalms.  Of those 16 times, the word refuge is used in the context of "taking refuge" 10 times.  An additional time, refuge is in the context of "finding refuge."  

So, perhaps all this time, the thing that has been missing hasn't been God's provision of refuge, but my own action of seeking it out and grabbing on to it.  Have I not been taking advantage of the refuge he's already providing?  It gives a whole new perspective to my anger at God, realizing that maybe his promises of refuge weren't empty after all.  Maybe my anger and desperation has blinded me to all the ways he was trying to give me a refuge.  God is safety, deliverance, peace - all those things I associate with refuge.  But somewhere between college and now, I have somehow stopped actually taking refuge in God.  

I don't know if anyone can fully understand the relief this brings unless they have ever been torn between trusting in God's character and feeling like he's breaking with that character.  It's humbling to think that all this time my pride might have been the thing making me feel like God was standoffish.  That isn't to say that my feelings of anger and bitterness are completely resolved, because they are not, but it at least gives me something to think about.

Psalm 5 - Refuge

There was a time when I knew what it felt like to have refuge in God, but I haven't felt that way in a long time.  If I had to pinpoint one word to say what I feel like I've been missing in my life, it would be refuge.  That word means so much to me that it's hard to even define, so I tried to define it visually.

When I hear the word refuge, I have a temporary physical reaction: a deep breath, a relaxed posture, and my eyes momentarily drift closed.  A refuge is a place of complete unburdening, the ability to let go of everything that is weighing down my heart and my mind.

And then, I feel frustration, anger, and bitterness.  Why is God only letting me have refuge so infrequently, for a few seconds here and there?  Why can I not carry that sense of refuge with me like I used to when dealing with difficult situations?  

An excellent friend pointed out to me a couple days ago that it might be a good idea for me to forget about what things used to be like for me and look toward the future instead.  She is absolutely right.  I think it's healthy for me to want to examine why I am in the place I currently am in, but not for me to use it as more fuel for any anger and bitterness I have towards God.  So yes, I have felt as if God is holding out on me, letting me see glimpses of what I desire so badly, but always keeping complete refuge and unburdening just out of reach.  But now I want to look at my past as a way to understand where I am at present so that I can move on.

It's not that I expect my circumstances to be easy because I have faith in God, because I don't.  But, ever since things started getting difficult between God and I way back in college, I've felt like God is allowing dozens of stressors and horrible circumstances to pound away at my faith and sense of well-being without providing me that sense of refuge - that feeling that I have somewhere I can retreat to in a moment and experience safety and peace in the midst of chaos.

Maybe I haven't looked for it hard enough (more on that in a later post) or in the right places.  Maybe there really haven't been many opportunities for refuge after all.  Maybe my memory is too short and I'm too quickly forgetting the times when I have been able to unburden completely.

Whatever the reason, I realize that my heart has become hardened towards God because I have perceived a lack of refuge so often since my freshman year of college.  After a while, I think I quit looking for God to provide refuge and even stopped asking for it.  (If you want to read more about the process of hardening my heart, read the entry from July 19 called "Psalm 1").