The point of this blog was to keep myself accountable and write consistently. Oops. Oh well.
Tonight I find myself thinking about how disappointed and discouraged I’ve been lately. Now, I’m not one who is easily discouraged, and I can find the best in anyone, (no matter how deeply buried it might be). But sometimes it just feels like the deck is stacked against you and you’re not just facing hill after hill after hill, but rather a whole mountain range that looks like it goes on for miles.
I don’t know if anyone else out there is like me, but in the midst of these life circumstances I just want to curl up in a fetal position, pull the covers over my head and go to sleep for about a hundred years. Wake me up when its over. What’s going on you ask? Oh nothing much, just life transition. Did I forget to mention I don’t really like change all that much? Especially since I remember being way more flexible than I currently feel.
So what do I do when I desperately want to have joy, yet my heart cries out with the pain of disappointment? Usually the first thing I would do is grab a pint of coconut or green tea ice cream (don’t ask me why, there’s just something really satisfying about those particular flavors to me) and I sit and binge watch a baking competition. Then, because my body would revolt and be unhappy with me, a few hours later I’d get up and run a few miles, burning off the calories, soothing my tv-soaked with endorphins and dopamine. The next day, I’d go to work and be super industrious, and begin to feel happy, because I felt useful and I could shut the door on that part of my soul that is screaming. Busyness works amazingly well to stave off pain. Just don’t have time for pain – denial is a beautiful technique.
Here’s where the but comes in (and its pretty big, given that I’ve been sitting in an environment for two years that is the equivalent of a hothouse on steroids for my spirit, soul and emotions. You literally have to TRY to NOT grow here). I’ve discovered that pain, while perhaps unpleasant, really isn’t all that bad. I’d assigned a morality to pain, that I’m doing ‘good’ if I’m not going through painful things, the converse of that being I’m doing ‘bad’ if I am. But pain (and I’m talking about emotional pain here) doesn’t necessarily have a moral value. It’s more like the bat signal that tells me “Hey, something is wrong in this vicinity and you need a superhero to show up.” For me, that superhero is Jesus.
My background is one that somewhere along the way I picked up the crazy notion that I should be clean before I came to God for anything. I mean, grace, who needs it? Oh I don’t know, just EVERYBODY. It would be easy to write down that God’s grace has been sufficient for me and it has been. But there is so much process encompassed within that simple little sentence. You want to know what grace does for me really? It empowers me to be honest with God – like super-close to the blaspheme line honest. Because He can take it.
It’s scary to be honest with God sometimes. To be vulnerable to anyone can prove challenging, but to show my imperfect heart to a perfect being, who is holy and righteous to boot? It feels like I don’t stand a chance. Yet the more of my own heart that I share with the One who created me, the more open I am with Him, the better I feel. One of my favorite quotes I’ve paraphrased here, from Nelson Mandela, “it doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, it only matters how many times you get up.” How do I keep my wonder, how do I keep my perspective “correct”? Especially in the midst of disappointment?
I let the dirt be on my face. I let the emotion, the pain, all the raw feels, I let it all out. And as I sit in the midst of it, Jesus shows up, every single time. We’ve got a thing now, where I just tell him all of the things that have sucked lately, straight to His beautiful face. And ever so gently, with great great kindness, ( the sort of kindness that’s almost irritating) He wipes off my face, takes me by the hand, lifting me up again. And suddenly, one foot is in front of the other again.
Here’s the point to all of the above 800 something words. I used to try to climb out of discouragement by myself. I’ve discovered I’m not big enough and I’m not strong enough to do that. He is. The only way to get out of it is to walk through it. And it’s so much nicer to walk with Him through it than it is to try and do it on your own. Take it from one who’s tried. Keeping your wonder isn’t about never experiencing pain or walking around continually happy every waking hour. Keeping your wonder is getting knocked down, waking through the pain with God, who loves you so much more than you can think or imagine, and watching Him still love you, when you feel the most un-lovable. Keeping your wonder is experiencing the pain of disappointment, while keeping your eye on the person of Truth.
Keep Your Wonder 