When Life Overwhelms

Sometimes, life feels so big.  It hangs over us in scary shadows and we look up, hoping for a glimpse of the sun, between the darkened branches.

Heaviness can settle and the tightness in your chest threatens to rob your breath.  Joy is a hope, forgotten.

I feel my fist rising and long to shake it at the sparkling heavens above.  The storm clouds in my mind so big, so dark, so dangerous.

These things come, as they always do, in waves, that pull our legs beneath us, and our faces seeking air.

We cannot prepare for them, only ride them out, in the hope that the next won't carry us under, take us farther out.

I feel this way right now.

It is in these moments, that I am given a choice for my response.

So, often I'll lie under the weight.  Too discouraged or broken to move.  I'll thunder at the heavens and push forward in my stubborn pride.

I'll make things different.  I will fix this world, this life, with my own two hands and I press forward in willful determination.  Only, to find myself back in this place again.

The whisper of surrender sounds like a curse in my ears and all I want to do is rail and fight and triumph.

Each time it comes sweeter, rest, believe, enjoy.  Praise.  Be thankful.

Celebrate.

Even now, I look out and the grass is green, the trees hang their gentle leaves to kiss the ground.  Children's laughter carries with the wind and the call of the bird echoes.

Like Eeyore carrying his storm cloud everywhere he goes, I'm sucking life and joy into my black mood.

It's choices, isn't it.  When it feels as if everything is going to fall apart and truth, reality, and fear threaten our security, we get to decide how we'll react.

Will we fight our way out, curl in a depressed ball, or will we rejoice that nothing lasts forever.  That in the hurt and instability is a joyful hope, a peaceful surrender.

I breathe, and the sweet air fills my lungs.  I raise my hands and whisper a prayer of praise.  That in this, we are made stronger, His faithfulness is not dismayed by our circumstances.  In every moment there is a call to rejoice.

While I cannot control every thing that comes across my path, the realities I am forced to face, and the struggles that demand, I can choose my reactions and in the midst of the storming seas take hope, that there is rest in the bottom of the boat.

Even in this, my love, believe.
Be filled with joy and hope.
Do not surrender to your failings.
Or the voice that steals your truth
.
Fling wide your arms to the heavens.
Feel the scent of a grace filled rain.
Lift praise upon your lips.
Declare my pleasures.
It is more than your desperate plea.

Stepping into the sea of trust.

Trust.

It is something that can be given, abused, treasured, broken, retracted.

How often does someone hurt us or lie to us and we respond with, 'now my trust is broken!'  It leaves one lost and separated.  There is not an easy return from broken trust.  The simple reason being that we leave the responsibility of repairing our trust on the one who harmed it in the first place.

I forgive you.  I just don't trust you right now.

Is not forgiveness the full return of trust.  A giving away of grace?

Danny Silk from Bethel Church once said that 'trust is a choice'.

That is something that has stuck with me.  I process it.  I try to live it.  It's taken me quite a while to understand how to exist, choosing to trust.

My past is a constant blunder of pain.  There would be moments that things would seem to flow in a small sense of security, then my world would turn upside down.  When it righted itself, I would be left desperate to preserve my safety and my peace.  Trust was left trailing far behind my need to protect myself.

I was able to talk to an amazing friend, Charis Scofield, a few weeks ago and she said very simply, 'you need to trust that God has good for you'.

And like I do.  I  pondered and mulled on that one statement.  God, what is trust supposed to look like?  In my experience, the moment I let my guard down and trust, I am met with heart rending pain.  What does it mean to believe that you have good for me?  My experience doesn't line up with that.

I have hedged myself in, desperately trying to guard against the worst possible scenarios.  Allowing what could hurt me most- to play often through my thoughts, that I may be prepared for the times that pain will come.  Because it will, pain will strike.  It will blind, break and make us bleed.  It is a guarantee of life.

I stand guarded.  Clenched and ready.  I am always prepared for the blows to strike, the friends to leave, the lover to dismiss me, the sickness to come.  I'm waiting.

And because we cannot exist in this state.  I have been breaking.  My constant stance against pain, causing me to only be aware of the very worst things in life.  I cannot see joy when I am looking for suffering.  I cannot believe there is good, when I am only waiting for bad.

Attempting to control my world, desperately trying to protect myself - has left me broken.

They say that when someone falls from a high height, the only way to sustain the fall is to be completely relaxed.  When you clench and prepare for the hit, you break every bone.

I want to share the little I've learned about trust.  I am not an expert - just a sojourner seeking peace, hungry for truth.

Trust is.

A resting place.  In my mind it is lying in a cool stream.  Head back, the hand of God beneath your neck, fully supported.  Knowing that waves of pain may come, choosing to rest and breath through them.  You cannot float if you are tense.  You have to completely let go of fighting the water and as you do - your body lifts, weightless, to rest on top the sea of life.

When you live as though trust is a choice you take back your power.  Choosing to believe the best and the good.  If someone wrongs you or fails you, don't search for it.  Allow it to come in it's wave.  Then wash off of you.  Step back into trust.  It is a great tool in your hand.  It is not meant as a weapon.

Trust is a place of peace, safety, and security.  All of the things, that in my life, I thought had been broken, were only taken because I rebelled against trust.  I refused to rest through the pain and instead sought to protect myself against it - this only caused me MORE pain.  I created the very thing I sought so desperately to avoid.

When you clench and struggle, you drown.  Every time.  Sometimes it's better to be punched in the face so someone can save you, then to carry both of you under.

There have been moments that dark imaginings and doubts creep so quietly through my place of trust.  I start to feel myself tensing, falling into old habits.  Then I pull back my mental wanderings and I choose to remember that I am letting my fear go.  I am resting in the stream of life.  My place of control is what I believe, and I believe that the promises are good.

People may fail me, but I am not going to set them up to fall.  I am not going to look for their mistakes or their struggles, to hold in front of myself, to remind me not to trust.

Rather, I live hand and heart open.

If joy is to come then I will dance and sing and live in the moment without fear of the shadows growing on the horizon of my mind.

If it is pain then I will let it wash over me, I will scream and cry, then let it go - let it run it's course and continue, even through the process, of resting in trust and peace.

I am amazed at the freedom I have found here.  As what once controlled me, no longer holds dominion over my thoughts.

Each day is a sweet treasure of peace.  The promises are - yes and amen.