glenna marshall

Feel Your Weakness, Feel Your Need

I lay on my left side facing the screen. The sonographer squirted a clear jelly on the wand and rested it near my sternum. Fascinated, I watched images of my heart fill the screen—pumping, beating, opening, closing. This is amazing, I thought, until I felt the familiar flutters and off beats pounding in my chest.

Later, when I was dressed and ready to go, the sonographer said the cardiologist would definitely want to talk to me about that valve problem he saw in my imaging. It’s not serious, but it’s one more thing.

I’d been feeling off for a few weeks until the flutters, pressure, and pain sent me to the ER. All the health history takes a while to explain. How can a disease in my spine impact my heart? It can, though, and after three hours in triage they sent me home with medication and a referral to see a cardiologist for further testing. The autoimmune disease that has wrecked my joints can also inflame the sac around the heart. I don’t know for sure yet, but it may also be the culprit for the valve issue discovered in the sonogram.

In the middle of all the weeks of testing, I was scheduled to speak at an event in my hometown. I sat in the green room before taking the stage to talk to a hundred women about God’s faithfulness in suffering, and I felt my heart do it’s strange knock, knock, pause, flutter before resuming a normal rhythm. My breath came a bit short, my head ached. I prayed for the Lord to still my heart, literally, while I studied my notes. Now? Could the timing be any worse?

My body has often failed me when it matters most. One disease fuses my abdominal organs together and has emptied my womb of any chance at holding life. The other disease lives in my spine and may one day fuse the vertebrae together in a permanent, forward curve. I’ve carried the scourge of chronic inflammation in my eyes, my rib cage, my hands, my spine, my knees, my skin, and now, my heart. It’s called a “whole body” disease. While there are seasons where everything quiets and I feel some respite, I know that around the corner something new can arrive or something old can awaken. Stress, even a good, anticipatory kind, triggers flare-ups. It stands to reason, then, that whenever I’m given an opportunity to talk about how God has sustained me through suffering that the suffering comes sweeping back in. My message must always be a present-progressive one, I guess. If I’m talking to you about God’s presence in our pain, know that I mean it right now, here in this moment, present tense.

silhouette of woman against sunset

When I need to be strong, I feel my every weakness. I feel the pointed edges of disease poking holes in my confidence. For a moment, doubts spin in my head. But then grace seals up every widening crack because something good is happening in the failure of my earthly form. Christ is at work in the pain in my spine, the flutter in my chest, the fog in my brain. For when I feel my every weakness, I also feel my need of Him.

When I feel my every weakness, I also feel my need of Him. Share on X

I have long bowed at the altar of self-sufficiency. Earlier in life, I felt confidence in a long line of accomplishments and talents. I liked that I could bend the approval of others towards my gifts. But poor health, among other things, has smashed my confidence. There is grace in this. The gift of a broken body is that it brings awareness of our insufficiency. It deepens the truth that without Christ we cannot do a blessed thing right. The good news is that He doesn’t require us to come to Him in a blaze of personal glory or a bounty of extraordinary talents. He doesn’t need us to be strong. He doesn’t actually need anything. He graciously includes us in His kingdom work and specializes in doing it through weak, ignorant vessels.

Self-sufficiency is a blind fold. It masks our true need for Jesus. Herein lies the gift of weakness. In the grip of disease, lack, poverty, deferred hopes, waiting, loneliness, and grief, the mask slips down a bit, and we get a glimpse of just how desperate we are. Just how dejected. Just how needy. This, weak friend, is a gift. Because there is a remedy for our desperation. In our weakness shines the great hope of Jesus Christ. When we were dead in our sins, He made us alive. When we think we’re too weak to be of any use to Him, He includes us in His plans anyway.

The One who saved us also sanctifies us, and He doesn’t need us to pretend like we don’t have problems in order to use us for His kingdom. His strength is magnified in our weaknesses. My four-year-old sings to me often, “We are weak, but He is strong.” There is no glory-grabbing in that. It’s all His. It can only be His. And I hear the Lord’s exhortation to Paul in that children’s song: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). The things we think will keep us from being useful are the very things He uses for our good and His glory.

When we know we need Him, we lean all the more on His strength. When we lean more on His strength, He gets the glory for the work that He does in our weakness. And then we can say with Paul, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamites. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9-10). Even operating at 100%, our best efforts are no match for the power of the risen Lord within us. His strength will always be enough.

I don’t feel strong when I sit in a doctor’s office and try to explain the rubick’s cube of my health history. I don’t feel strong when the pain in my spine wakes me up at 2 a.m. I don’t feel strong when the off-rhythm in my chest unsettles me while I’m driving across town or trying to sleep at night. I don’t feel strong when fatigue presses in during a busy work season. I don’t feel strong in the way we often think about strength. But grace abounds in my weaknesses, for when I am weak, I feel my need for Him. When I am weak, I remember that His power rests upon me. When I am weak, I remember that contentment is anchored to Christ, not my body or my gifts or anything that depends upon me, and then—then I am strong.

Let not conscience make you linger,
Nor of fitness fondly dream;
All the fitness He requireth
Is to feel your need of Him.
This He gives you, this He gives you, this He gives you
‘Tis the Spirit’s glimmering beam.[1]

 

 

 

 

[1] Joseph Hart, “Come Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy.” Lyrics.

Photo by Ahmet Sali on Unsplash

More than Many Sparrows

“Is the Lord enough for you?” he asked me.

It was late, nearing midnight, and rather than sleeping, my husband and I were sitting in the living room discussing some current challenges in our life. And by “discussing,” I mean that I was loudly airing my frustrations and expressing the awful truth that I did not see God’s goodness to us in some of these things.

So my husband’s question to me both chastised and angered me, especially considering that it is the theme of the book I am turning into my publisher in a month. Spending eight months writing about a topic doesn’t make you an expert, apparently. It only highlights what will always be a struggle. With angry tears on my face, I skirted the question by responding with my doubt. “I don’t see how a continued struggle with no solution is God’s way of being good to us.”

But my husband’s question was the right question, and I’ve been mulling it over since then. If the things I’ve begged for in daily prayer never, ever change, is the Lord enough for me?

It’s a question the Lord has put to me throughout all of my adult life. If there are no children in your future, am I enough for you? If your life never looks successful, am I enough for you? If you always struggle to pay your bills, am I enough for you? If you lose your child, am I enough for you? If you are never healed from physical pain, am I enough for you? 

When He puts the question to you, it might look different, but the crux is the same. If you don’t get the job, am I enough for you? If your kids are rebellious, am I enough for you? If your spouse leaves you, am I enough for you? If you never get well again, am I enough for you? If you lose your possessions, am I enough for you? If you are never married, am I enough for you? If you are betrayed by a loved one, am I enough for you? If you are fired, am I enough for you? If your child is sick, am I enough for you? If you don’t know how to make ends meet, am I enough for you? If you fail in your work or ministry, am I enough for you?

When I think about the way I’ve answered the question in the past, most of the time I’ve lived as though He isn’t enough for me. But my poor reactionary behavior doesn’t declare what is true about God. Though I have expressed my lack of belief in His sufficiency, it doesn’t negate the truth that He still really is enough for me. In fact, He is enough for me in spite of my doubt.

The question of His sufficiency forces us to pin down what we treasure the most: the answer to our prayers or the One to whom we pray. Can we be content if all we have is Christ? Theoretically, I want to always respond immediately with a resounding YES! I’m sure you do, too. But, when the bills are stacked so high you can’t bear to open them, can you really declare the Lords’ sufficiency? When you’re so bent over with chronic pain that you can barely function, will you confidently say that God is enough for you? When you’re so lonely you can’t stand another night alone, will you in that moment speak the words of God’s faithfulness?

Practically, it’s hard to apply what we want to believe to our present circumstances. Our troubles are frighteningly real, tangible, and sometimes armed with a ticking clock. We scramble for a solution and fill our sleepless nights with frenetic worry. Striving is the best word I can think of to describe the incessant, fruitless spinning we do when confronted with circumstances we hate but are powerless to change. Like a hamster running as hard as it can in its stationary wheel, striving produces absolutely nothing helpful. What’s interesting about the biblical commands that address our striving, worrying hearts is the absence of physical actionable steps. When Jesus talks about worry in the Sermon on the Mount, He doesn’t give you three steps for “breaking up with worry.” He doesn’t lay out a financial plan for making ends meet, nor does He tell you how to plan your future to avoid similar circumstances. His answer to worry and anxiety is found in addressing where our treasure lies. It’s found in trusting the faithfulness of God. In true, Jesus-like fashion, our Savior doesn’t address the circumstances. He addresses the heart.

“Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky; They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they?” (Mt. 6:25-26)

The question of God's sufficiency is one I must re-answer every morning when my feet hit the floor. Though my head may assent to the truth that He is enough, I have to re-arm my heart with certainty because it struggles so much to keep up. I don't know what any day holds, but I know Who holds my days. He even holds the days of a bird so tiny and insignificant that most of us only think about them when we read Matthew 6. Isn't He enough for us? As Jesus put it,

He doesn’t say, seek out a better financial plan, or search for as many possible solutions to your health problems as you can, or manipulate your conversations so as to win back the approval you’ve lost. He doesn’t say try harder, do more, do better. He simply says, “Don’t worry.” And the reason is found a few verses down after He demonstrates the Father’s good care of something as insignificant as grass and flowers which are here today and gone tomorrow. “Won’t He do much more for you–you of little faith? So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will be we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For the idolaters eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father in heaven knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you” (Mt. 6:30b-33).

Oh, Jesus with the zinger! To eagerly seek the provision for our needs rather than the Provider of them is nothing short of idolatry. He’s asking you: What’s your treasure? The gift or the Giver? When you do not yet have the things you pray for, am I enough for you? His encouragement to you is to stop running in the hamster wheel and decide in your heart that He is enough for you. He knows your needs, and you can trust Him with your past, present, and future. When God doesn’t swoop in to answer our prayers immediately, it is not because He is searching for His sufficiency. If He waits, it is because He is working something good from our waiting. If He prolongs our trial, it isn’t because He delights in our suffering but because He delights in cultivating our trust in Him. He will always be enough for us, but sometimes it might take scraping the bottom of the bucket for us to truly see that He is.

When God doesn't swoop in to answer our prayers immediately, it is not because He is searching for His sufficiency. If He waits, it is because He is working something good from our waiting. Share on X

I think back to the night on the couch where my worries got the best of me, and I couldn’t get off the hamster wheel (or to be honest, I didn’t want to jump off of it because there is something sinfully satisfying in spinning my wheels). My husband’s pointed question was exactly the one I needed to consider. The circumstances, though, frustrating, are not the point. The point is where my contentment, security, and identity lie. If my circumstances never change–if yours never do–is the Lord enough for us? Scripture resonates with His faithful sufficiency, and we must fight the lie that He has left us to flounder in our troubles. We fight it by pressing ourselves up against the truth of Scripture every morning to remember that the One who has been faithful in the past will be faithful today and tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow.

The question of God’s sufficiency is one I must re-answer every morning when my feet hit the floor. Though my head may assent to the truth that He is enough, I have to re-arm my heart with certainty because it struggles so much to keep up. It is grace to go back to the core of the gospel and to remember that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was sufficient to cover all my sin, even these moments of angry doubt about His current provision. He was enough at the cross, so He will always be enough.

I don’t know what any day holds, but I know Who holds my days. He even holds the days of a bird so tiny and insignificant that most of us only think about them when we read Matthew 6. Isn’t He enough for us? As Jesus put it, “Aren’t you worth more than many sparrows?”

If He prolongs our trial, it isn't because He delights in our suffering but because He delights in cultivating our trust in Him. Share on X

Photo by SK Yeong on Unsplash

There Will Be Joy

Every morning at 6 a.m. you can find me sitting cross legged and bleary eyed on the tan couch in my living room. Outside, the sun rises with reliable regularity, its pink morning glow filtered between the tulip trees in our backyard. I’ve been looking at the same view for more than ten years of mornings there on that couch. What’s more predictable than the rising sun is the way the Lord keeps His promises to be with me. He’s a present God. He’s demonstrated it throughout all of Scripture. He will love His people by being with them.  And what’s more, not just with but in His people.

As a believer in Christ, the trembling heart of this thirty-six year old woman is a place where God is pleased to dwell. So, I know that when I rub the sleep from my eyes and adjust my glasses so I can see the print better in my study Bible, God is with me in the wee hours of the morning. True, He’s always with me, but I believe the primary way I can enjoy His presence is by listening to His voice in Scripture. And listening to His voice has strengthened my faith in His faithful presence in my life.

“I rise before dawn and cry out for help; I put my hope in Your Word.” Psalm 119:147

There were a lot of years when I didn’t view it that way. I stumbled to the couch forty minutes later than planned, flipped through the Bible aimlessly, skimmed some verses, and left wondering why I bothered. I believed the gospel but struggled to connect the Scriptures to my circumstances. I went to the Word looking for a prescription and was disappointed when I couldn’t read the doctor’s handwriting. The problem, however, wasn’t the difficulty of the words, the depths of theological truths, or my cerebral limitations. No, God didn’t give us His Word only to dangle it in front of us so we could wish we were a little smarter. The Bible is for everyone.

One of my discipleship partners told a story recently of a patient she used to see in the clinic where she worked as a nurse. The patient was near forty years old and mentally disabled to the degree that he was unable to live alone. But each time that he saw my friend at the clinic, he delighted in telling her what he had read in his Bible that morning. He would overflow with the goodness of the truths he’d read and held close to his heart. My friend was always convicted by his love for and devotion to the Word. “So,” she said to our discipleship group one afternoon at the local coffee shop, “there’s John Piper on one end of the spectrum and this patient on the other, and both of them love the Word and can understand it enough to share it.” There just aren’t a lot of excuses for our resistance to studying the Bible, are there? My reluctance to really giving myself to study of the Word in years past was based largely upon laziness.

“Happy are those who keep His decrees and seek Him with all their heart.” (Ps. 119:2)

Through several years of physical suffering and emotional stress, the Lord plied the practice of Bible study out of my undisciplined heart. He brought me to the point of desperation to see my deep need for His instruction. In the vise of pain, the question that sent me to the Scriptures each morning sounded like Peter’s: “Where else can I go? You have the words of life.” After practicing it diligently for more than a decade (which is just a breath compared to the many saints who have loved Jesus longer and harder than I have), here are three things I’ve learned about giving yourself to regular, intentional Bible study: You will never not need the Word, no time in it is wasted, and there will be joy in studying it.

You will never not need the Word, no time in it is wasted, and there will be joy in studying it. Share on X

You Will Never Not Need the Word

Sanctification, the process of becoming like Christ, is ongoing. Growing in godliness and faith should be a pattern in every believer’s life. While there will be discouraging stalls and surprising spurts, the one who has been made a new creation in Christ will be known by his or her good fruit. While Scripture assures us that our sanctification process will end in glorification, for now we must wake up each morning to renew our minds and fight our sin until we see Him face to face. Or, if we won’t do those things, we’ll deceive ourselves and then wonder at the lack of fruit in our lives. It always gives me pause when I hear of Christians who do not value regular Bible intake. I do not understand how we are supposed to grow in our knowledge of and love for God if we do not expose ourselves to His chosen means of revelation. There will never be a time, Christian, when you do not need the Word of God. Not until you are gathered around the throne of God with every believer is it safe for you to stop giving yourself to study of the Word.

“Never take the word of truth from my mouth, for I hope in Your judgments.” (Ps. 119:43)

In his second letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul said this, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, and you know that from childhood you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:14-17).

In terms of salvation, obedience to God, knowledge of His character, living as a disciple of Christ, and being equipped for good works, we cannot function apart from the Word. The Bible is not like other books. In studying, in memorizing, in articulating it to others, the Word of God is being imprinted on our hearts. We’ve been given the mind of Christ. When I trace the crooked path toward holiness through my adulthood as a believer, I can see that the Bible is changing the way I think.

Apart from knowledge unto salvation and apart from being equipped to know God, serve the Church, and speak the gospel to the lost, the Bible is a gift during suffering. I am telling you from experience, the Bible both prepares you for suffering and perseveres you through it. I don’t know how I would have lived through my years of chronic pain without the Psalms. I don’t know how I could have pressed on through years of discouraging ministry without Paul’s instructions and exhortations for the Church. I don’t know how I could have rightly mourned my infertility without the truth of God’s goodness jumping off every page of my Bible. And now, when life is full and still and blossoming with hope like every spring should, I am hiding away the encouragement from 1 Peter in the closets of my heart so that when I find myself down in a valley of  the shadow, I will know for certain Who is with me.

“Trouble and distress have overtaken me, but Your commands are my delight.” (Ps. 119:143)

There will never be a morning when my flesh does not cry out to be served, when my impatience doesn’t lord over my children, when my snarky attitude wants to be quieted, when my pride doesn’t fight for glory. I will be deep in my need and putting my sin to death until I see Jesus. Thus, there will never be a  time when I will not need the truths of Scripture and the presence of the Spirit to aid me in the process of killing my sin, renewing my mind, and making me holy.

No Time in the Word is Wasted

Though desperate times in my life resulted in the desperate measures of disciplined Bible study, there have definitely been dry spells and seasons of what seemed like little growth. Even during the years when I did nothing more than read aimlessly without a map, none of my time spent in the Word was wasted. The Father, the Spirit, and the Son will always testify to one another (Jn. 12:44-50, 16:5-13). Believers can trust that the Spirit who lives in them will use their exposure to the Word for good.

“Open my eyes so that I may contemplate wonderful things from Your instruction.” (Ps. 119:18)

I remember long, dry seasons when I simply could not get my heart to engage with the Word and when affection for the Lord felt non-existent. But feelings are not truth-tellers, and the Spirit was doing the good work of helping me “hide” the Word in my heart. Admittedly, there have been seasons in my life when prolonged study has not been feasible. Certain stretches of motherhood have left me with little in my tank, and it was a success to simply read the Word on a semi-regular basis. This was to my benefit! Through simply reading passages or carrying around a few verses on a note card to memorize, I was absorbing the Scriptures, and that can never be bad for our spiritual health. I can look back at dry spells and seasons of exhaustion and see the Lord’s persevering work in my heart with every moment spent in His Word. He was teaching me to press on even when I didn’t feel like it, and that is when perseverance is best learned.

There Will be Joy in Studying the Word

One morning last week, I was sitting in my usual spot watching the sun rise and scribbling down notes from 1 Peter. It was in the middle of a thought about holy living with an eye on our “temporary residence” on earth (1 Pt. 1:15-17) when I realized that I was smiling. At 6:30 in the morning, I was only partially caffeinated, sporting impressive bed-head, and yet–smiling. There was literally no place I’d rather have been than that faded, tan couch near the windows where the sun rose between the branches of the tulip trees.

It’s not always such a happy practice, sure. Happiness and joy aren’t always made of the same substance. There are mornings when I can’t focus because I’ve slept poorly or when my heart is clouded with anxiety or concern over life circumstances.  Sometimes my two-year-old wakes up far too early and I’ve to pull apart my passage in the morning with an episode of “Paw Patrol” in the background. Some mornings I sow my sorrows in tears over my Bible knowing that if joy doesn’t come in my lifetime, it will certainly come in eternity. Overall, when I look at my mornings spent studying the Word from a cumulative standpoint, joy is the primary word that comes to mind. Gritty, overflowing, hard-won, gift-from-God joy. It’s followed closely by the word transforming. You see, I’m not the same person I was ten years ago when I first began to study the Bible with something beyond a prepackaged study or a quick daily skim of a few verses. The Lord has used His Word to convict, correct, teach, train, encourage, heal, stretch, challenge, change, sanctify me. Though study is work, it has grown to be joyous work that draws me near to the God I have so long claimed to love. He is always near, and I am learning that it is a joy to listen to His voice.

“Those who fear You will see me and rejoice, for I put my hope in Your word.” (Ps. 119:74)

If you’re plodding through the Bible right now, take heart. The Lord is near, and there will be joy found in listening to His Word. If you’re living through suffering currently, take heart. The Lord is near, and there will be joy found in listening to His Word. If you’re not sure where to start, take heart and begin reading today. The Lord is near, and there will be joy found listening to His Word. We have been given an unmatched, incomparable gift in the Scriptures. God has given us Himself! Take and read, Christian. There will be joy.

“I have your decrees as a heritage forever; indeed, they are the joy of my heart. I am resolved to obey Your statutes to the very end.” (Ps. 119: 111-112)

Sometimes we are motivated but don’t know where to start! If you’re looking for some actionable steps to incorporate into your Bible reading time, click here for a free PDF guide and a video demonstration of my exegetical method. The steps are easy to implement and adopt and will help you to ask four main questions of each passage after considering historical context and genre.

Photo by Perminder Klair on Unsplash

He Will Be Strong in Your Weakness

When I took the stage, I was one hundred percent confident in my message. My new boots pinched a bit as I climbed the steps to the piano, but I was certain of the words I would speak, sure that the melodies wrapped around the truth of God’s goodness to us in suffering were the right ones to speak, to sing, to hand out liberally to the women in the pews who had gathered on a chilly, rainy Saturday morning. I was one hundred percent confident in what they needed to hear. But I was also one hundred percent confident in my inability to convey the message rightly. In short, I felt like a walking disaster.

Your weakness is a gift.

Much of what I have learned about God’s kindness to us in trials comes from my own experience with physical pain. It’s not just a story I share because I can’t think of anything else to explain the truth of God’s ability to redeem the broken things in our lives for good. No, it has been one of the main catalysts for my understanding that what I need most in times of suffering is not relief from it but confidence in God’s nearness in the midst of it. When I lived with an undiagnosed disease that was robbing me of health and sanity, it was God’s presence that propelled me through the pain and uncovered my heart’s true longing for Him. It is what drove me to the Scriptures with single-minded desperation. It is what God used to train me to love His Word.

Being in remission for the better part of the last two years has meant that pain is a memory that is faded at the edges. I’ve basked in nearly two years of normalcy and sleep and health. And then, like an uninvited guest, my pain shows up unwelcome and unannounced, no longer a sepia toned reminiscence. Usually it means I’m not handling stress well, but regardless of its impetus, physical pain will hold me captive to my broken body for as long as I live. There is no cure for my disease(s); I will not die from them but with them. The effects of my disease pop up when I need them not to. Unfortunately, any kind of stress–even mere anticipation of something good–can trigger physical pain, anxiety, and insomnia. In other words, when I need to be at my best, my body tends to be at its worst. 

So, a few weeks back when I was prepared and ready to take a stage for an hour and a half, I found myself the night before lying awake in bed with heart palpitations, nausea, and pain shooting up my spine. I wasn’t nervous about the event; I had looked forward to it all week. I tossed and turned, prayed and fretted. Eventually, I walked the floors of the basement suite that were graciously given to me by some members of the host church. I recited every Scripture I could call to memory, staying specifically in Psalm 23.  “This is when I know that You are with me, down here in the valley of physical suffering, Lord.” Why does my body rebel when I need to rely on it the most?

It’s incredibly frustrating to think you’re a dependable, self-sufficient person but to feel trapped in a body that is only reliably unreliable. It’s also exactly how the Lord likes to use us.

After sleeping less than two hours, my alarm buzzed at 6 am, and I dragged myself out of bed to get some coffee. Once procured, I sat with my Bible intending to read Psalm 107, which is one of my favorite spots to land when I’m feeling frazzled. How could I face a room full of women when I felt so physically unable to perform? Who am I to even take a stage? What can I bring to the table that hasn’t been said a thousand times before? “I’m weak, Lord,” I told Him. But I realized in that moment that weak is how He wants me. Weak is a good place to be. Our weakness is where we get to see His strength. I read through Psalm 107, but I got distracted by the words of the next psalm, written by David.

“My heart is confident, God; I will sing; I will sing praises with the whole of my being. Wake up, harp and lyre! I will wake up the dawn. I will praise You, Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to You among the nations. For Your faithful love is higher than the heavens, and Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds…God has spoken in His sanctuary: ‘I will triumph!'” (Ps. 108:1-4, 7b).

It struck me that the confidence David had was not in himself but in his God, whose declaration of triumph connotes a sure, certain victory. David’s response to the Lord’s ability is praise, all praise.

Paul’s thorn.

My phone dinged with a text not long after that. My mom had known I was feeling rough and sent the words of the apostle Paul to encourage me to do the good work set before me, no matter how my body protested. Paul was no stranger to suffering; his life was marked by persecution for the sake of the gospel of Christ. Even so, it must have been tempting at times to boast in the wideness of his ministry, the soundness of his doctrinally-heavy elocution, the far-reaching grasp of his reputation as a messenger of the gospel. If you are in Christian ministry, you understand the temptation there. If we’re not working for wealth or possessions, we’re tempted by notoriety or by how well we use our gifts.

I don’t think Paul was immune here. He was given a “thorn in the flesh” to keep him from boasting in his own strength, and though we cannot know what it was that tormented him, we do know he prayed to be released from it at least three times. His words (and the ones my mother sent to me that rainy, frazzled morning) communicate what we all need to lean into when we can’t understand our weaknesses in light of the work God has set before us:

“But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness'” (2 Cor.12:9a).

I prayed through the words, pleaded with the Lord to let my confidence find its home in Him alone. There was no other source of confidence that day. My body was rebelling and my brain was cluttered with the fog that accompanies my pain. I dressed, drove to the event, and found myself sharing my physical weaknesses with the event coordinators so they could pray for me. I didn’t want to admit it; I wanted to appear confident and sure of myself. I didn’t want them to regret asking me to take the stage. But, I knew that I needed their intercession more than I needed an appearance of self-sufficiency. The words prayed over me in that small room off the sanctuary were a balm to my quivering soul. The same words of Paul filled the air, and I knew that this was my reminder that God’s grace was sufficient for me. Not my ability. Not my gifts. Not my intelligence. Only His grace. If anything good came from the stage, it would only be because He was with me, perfecting His power in my very present weaknesses. And I when I took the stage and found my seat at the piano, when I opened my notes and dove into an explanation of God’s presence in our suffering as displayed through the life of Joseph, when I sang the words about God’s faithfulness in my own present physical pain–I knew I was experiencing God’s strength in my weakness firsthand.

After the event, my spine was on fire. I stood for more than an hour and spoke with women from all walks of life, and we shared with one another how God was faithful even in the ugliest stories. A older woman with a lovely Scottish lilt to her voice gripped my hands and prayed that God would be powerful in my weakness. Gripped by pain and mental exhaustion, I stood there with tears in my eyes. The irony wasn’t lost on me. It’s always after an event when God uses the hearers to bless the messenger. Perhaps they want to say thank you, but really they are saying what I need to hear, “You are weak, and He is strong.” Afterwards, I sat in my car in the parking lot before the long trip home and wept with the relief that comes from being spent on exactly the right thing in exactly the weakest way.

If there were reason to boast in myself, then I would get the praise, and what a short-sighted, vainglory it would be. But, the Lord has seen fit to remind me of my frailty, to keep me up at night with a dependency on His strength. And though I hate the pain, the foggy head, the sick stomach, the inability to simply go to sleep, I am deeply grateful that the Lord has made it abundantly clear that my weakness is where He delights to work. For in this, He gets the glory. He does. And on my best/worst days, that’s my desire.

“Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, catastrophes, persecutions, and in pressures, because of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9b-10).

He will be strong in your weakness.

Maybe your weakness isn’t a physical thorn. Maybe it’s mental. Or maybe it’s your backstory, your pre-conversion tale. Maybe it’s the sin that once held you in a suffocating vise. Maybe you speak of it as often as possible so it loses its power every time you back it up against the power of the gospel. Or maybe, like me, your thorn crops up when you need it the least and you wonder how in the world you will accomplish the good work God has set before you. This is the place, friend. This is where He delights in displaying His power–right in the middle of your weakest weakness. He will not share His glory with another, but He will gladly display it in you.

This is where He delights in displaying His power--right in the middle of your weakest weakness. He will not share His glory with another, but He will gladly display it in you. Share on X

Being a messenger with a limp is not a curse; it’s a gift. Broken vessels don’t usually display the strength of their makers, but in the upside-down realm of the kingdom of God, they absolutely can. When tasked with the work of spreading the gospel message, and I’d argue that we all are, you can be confident in His certain triumph. You can be certain that He will be strong in your weakness. You may flop, you may lose your train of thought, you might stutter over your words, you might forget a point, you may not see a return for your work, but You can be sure that His words will not return void. Your thorn may pierce you deeply, but it is only a thorn and it is only momentary. The certain triumph of the Lord our God means that He will accomplish His work. One of the resulting graces of His work is your eternal thorn-free life in His presence forever. And perhaps the kingdom of heaven will be a bit more populous than you expected because the Lord was pleased to be strong in your weakness.

Press on, Christian. He will be strong in your weakness.

 

 

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

Is it Sinful to Live in the Past?

I was juggling housework and a very energetic two-year-old yesterday morning when the phone rang. My friend on the other end, also dealing with a little one, had called with a very specific question about suffering and sin. As I’ve mulled it over, I decided to address her question publicly (with her permission).

She asked me, “Is it sinful to live in the past, even when the past wasn’t a result of poor choices but difficult circumstances not of our choosing?”

It’s a loaded question, really, and I told my friend that. When you dig into the root issues, you’re talking about God’s sovereignty and the problem of evil which are not easily explained in one blog post. And yet, there are some passages of Scripture that came to mind immediately when I considered whether or not it was sinful to dwell on a past marked by suffering. Specifically, I thought of Job and the apostle Paul.

If you’ve read my writing for very long, you know that I frequently address the topic of suffering. In one calendar year, we experienced a nearly failed adoption, the death of my grandmother, my persistent struggle with chronic illnesses, and my mother’s brain tumor and subsequent brain surgery. Because I’m a writer, I wrote about these difficulties as a way to both process and find hope. I shared them with you to help you connect the sufferings of your own life to what is true about God as revealed in Scripture. It’s the primary reason I write: to remind you to let Scripture inform your suffering, not the other way around. So often we work backwards, letting our circumstances dictate what is true about the character of God, which aids only in making God in our own image. What I hope to accomplish with my writing, speaking, and music is to point you to the Word of God first so that you can rightly view your hardships through a biblical lens that explains how God can be good, even in our suffering. Essentially, let’s let God tell us who He is. That said, I believe there are two thoughts to bear in mind when we consider our past sufferings.

The Past Can Serve Us 

My years of living with chronic pain and infertility are the vehicles I use to tell the story about God’s kindness and sovereignty, but they are just that: vehicles. The main story I tell is the one about God that comes from His Word, and the truth of the gospel must pierce every part of my testimony or else I’m just a resounding gong bemoaning the hard things that have happened to me. I’m not that unique; hard things happen to everyone. So, here is where I believe that my past experiences can serve as a place of ministry. When I stand at a podium and talk about how difficult it was to rock a baby to sleep every night for months without knowing if I could keep him, I share the ways my heart felt like broken shards of glass so that I can highlight how the faithfulness of God put all those pieces back together. When I write about the years that I cried out to the Lord for healing because of the disastrous effects of physical pain, I do so to explain how the Lord’s presence and the ministry of His Word persevered me through even the darkest nights of body and soul. The past experiences are merely the touch points for liberally handing out the greatest comfort, which is the truth of God’s unchanging, purposeful nature as seen in Scripture.

“…for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know both how to have a little, and I know how to have a lot. In any and all circumstance I have learned the secret of being content–whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need. I am able to do all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:11-13)

I want to be able to say with Paul that I’ve learned contentment in every circumstance. I’m not there yet by a long shot, but with each round of small sufferings I’ve learned that when contentment is found in Christ, then the treasure is not so much the end of specific sufferings but rather His constancy in the midst of them. He is the treasure. In this way, our sufferings serve us as ways to recount God’s past faithfulness to us. You see this pattern in Scripture frequently. The psalmists often structured their songs about suffering by beginning with despair and ending in praise. How did they make this shift? The key is that they nearly always called to mind the past faithfulness of God in order to believe in His future faithfulness. The Psalms are rich with a beautifully relatable pattern of panicking about circumstances, lamenting what has happened, remembering God’s past faithfulness, and resolving to trust Him because of that past faithfulness. I don’t believe the psalmists are “living in the past,” but rather, are allowing the constancy of God’s goodness in the past help them to persevere through present and future sufferings.

The act of remembering God’s past faithfulness is one of the recurring themes of Scripture I’ve noticed in my Bible reading over the past few years, and I believe the practice is meant to remind us who God is as we are bent toward disbelief. Or, in the case of suffering or hardships, we’re bent to let those things tell us what is true about God. Remembering God’s past faithfulness must be done by knowing Him as He’s revealed Himself to us in Scripture and looking for the ways He’s kept His Word in our past difficulties. In this way, I believe we can safely allow our past hurts to highlight God’s goodness to us and give us a place of ministry to those who are currently suffering. It’s incredibly important to keep God as the hero of His story and yours to prevent what I believe can be the sinful aspect of “living in the past.”

The Past Can Enslave Us

There is nothing more annoying than listening to someone recount all the ways they’re victimized by their circumstances. Our culture feeds this self-entitled worldview by liberally spooning out the lies that we are basically good and therefore undeserving of anything bad that happens to us, even the consequences of poor or sinful choices. Here again, we must let Scripture inform the way we think about even the most basic of truths about humanity: the heart is desperately wicked and there is no one who is good or who seeks God (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:10-12).

Sometimes we suffer at the hands of our own sinfulness or at the hands of others. Sometimes we suffer because of our commitment to Christ. And sometimes we suffer and never know why. It is this last one that my friend was addressing in her question. Suffering that seems arbitrary is hard to swallow. I think of Job, who never knew what was behind the catastrophes that shattered his life. And yet, I am thankful for the account of Job’s suffering in Scripture because we are taught how to process suffering that we cannot understand or categorize.

The Job replied to the Lord: “I know that You can do anything and no plan of Yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this who conceals My counsel with ignorance?’ Surely I spoke about things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know…Therefore I take back my words and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:1-3, 6)

What was most comforting to Job in the end was not the cessation of his suffering but the strong, bold statements about the character of God–His wisdom, His authority, His universal sovereignty, even and especially in Job’s suffering. I wouldn’t say that Job “lived in his past,” but he let his experiences serve as a vehicle to grapple with what was true about God.

“Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead. I pursue as my goal the prize promised by Go’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. Therefore, all who are mature should think this way.” (Philippians 3:12-15a)

Paul suffered a lot for his relentless preaching of the gospel, but I don’t see him as a victim of his past. Rather, I see a man who recounts them as a way to talk about the prize of pursuing Christ wholeheartedly. He presses forward for the treasure of Jesus, for maturity in the faith, for a citizenship anchored in heaven. The difference between living as a victim of your circumstances and rejoicing in them is again viewing God as the hero of the story. When we prop up ourselves as the heroes of our own stories, we count our sufferings as undeserved and unjust which puts us at odds with both God’s position of authority and sovereignty. Rather, I believe we should recognize that whatever God allows into our lives has first been filtered through fingers that are threading together a tapestry of redemption that we cannot fathom. Our sufferings may seem arbitrary at times, but what we don’t see is the way God may use them to display the power of the gospel to a watching a world. Avoiding self-victimization begins with trusting a good, sovereign God with our suffering. Maturity grows from the recognition that we’ve been taken hold of by Christ, not our sufferings.

Remembering God’s Faithfulness or Recounting My Miseries?

As people of the cross, the challenge lies in recounting God’s faithfulness in our past, rather than dwelling on how we felt about our suffering. Like most of our struggles as sojourners longing for our better country, we must challenge our feelings with the truth of Scripture. We miss the ways God has worked things for our good when we dwell on our miseries rather than His good purposes.

We miss the ways God has worked things for our good when we dwell on our miseries rather than His good purposes. Share on X

So is it sinful to live in the past? It can be if we allow ourselves to be enslaved to a victim mentality. In so doing, we miss the way our past sufferings can serve as a rich palette for painting a picture of the Scriptural truths about God’s unending, faithful goodness to us. But we must first endeavor to see Him as both the treasure and the hero of our past, present, and future.

 

Photo by Moritz Schumacher on Unsplash

Recommended reading: Future Grace: the Purifying Power of the Promises of God by John Piper

The Strongest Thread

It was mid-October a year ago when my mom had brain surgery to remove a tumor from her left frontal lobe. Hovering over the place where her speech and emotions live, the tumor had grown quickly enough to cause a seizure and lost time. I remember how nervous we were when it all happened on a night nobody expected, how my mom and I laid in the hospital bed together and tried to piece together what her recovery would be like. And then there was the surgery, the good report, the way we sat quietly waiting for enough hours to pass to see what the side effects might be.

I remember how my dad and my aunt and I all slept in the CCU waiting room, and how one really doesn’t sleep in a waiting room but waits while pretending to sleep. I remember the woman sitting next to me and the odd way she talked to herself while trying to get comfortable on the teal vinyl chair for the night. Her teenage son had overdosed the night before. There was a family in another corner of the overnight waiting room whose patriarchal member was suddenly diagnosed with late stage esophageal cancer, and I remember my aunt, a former ICU nurse, telling me his prognosis was poor. I remember how we lined up, all of us, at the doors of the ICU and waited for the nurses to buzz us in during visiting hours. What brave smiles we all wore, and how we took any little sign of improvement as proof that all would be well. There was that lady whose husband had had a massive stroke. “They told us he said a few words!” she said with a beaming smile. It was unlikely that he would walk again, but he had said a word or two, and that was enough for hope and resilience to blossom on her face.

The man in the room next to my mom’s never had a visitor.  I thought about sitting in his room and praying for him while he slept. I wish that I had. I don’t know why I didn’t. I will never forget his brown toes peeking out from beneath the sterile hospital blanket. Someone give him some socks, I kept thinking. He needs some socks.

During visiting hours a couple of classical violinists came and played hymns for the ICU patients, and I stood there by the nurse’s desk with tears in my eyes, the non-patient who didn’t know how to reconcile all the hope and grief living in that hospital corridor.

Less than a week later, I sat outside with my mom on the deck behind her house. I made some spiced tea for us, the Tennessee weather cooling off while we sat and watched the squirrels empty the backyard bird-feeder of its contents. I pretended to read but really I just watched my mom. She looked anxious. Do you want a book or a magazine, I asked her. No, she said, adjusting the headscarf I’d bought for her to wear post-surgery. She picked up her phone and then set it down without looking at it. No, I’m just trying to organize my thoughts. They’re always going off in weird directions. I can’t catch them.

We watched TV, she slept a lot, my dad and I cataloged every strange thing she did and googled “brain surgery recovery” when she wasn’t looking. There wasn’t a lot to recovery besides waiting and worrying and praying.

When I traveled home to my husband and kids in Missouri, I tried to process all that had happened that week, that month, that year. I couldn’t remember a harder year. And yet, my mother is fine. Healthy, thriving, nothing to remind us much of a brain surgery or the weeks of wondering what our family would look like when it was over. I sent her a text yesterday: Happy brain tumor removal anniversary!

Last week I dreamed of my grandmother. She died nearly two years ago in January. We buried her right after a snowstorm. In my dream she was exactly the way I remember her best—before Alzheimer’s, before she stopped speaking, before she didn’t know us, before she shrank down to the final version of her earthly self. In the middle of a night last week she was laughing the way she did when she squinted her eyes and showed all her teeth, as if she knew the joke was on her and she was glad to be laughing about it. That’s the way I remember her, the version that shows up in my dreams from time to time and reminds me that maybe she’s laughing that big in heaven with Jesus, but the joke is clearly on us because we’re not there to see her tuck her chin down and laugh with her eyes closed. When I dream of her, I always feel happy but wake up with a knot in my throat.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been remembering and writing. In some ways, I thought writing a book would be easy. It’s just communicating what’s true. How hard can it be? Turns out, it involves a lot of sitting in front of my laptop and watching my tears puddle on the table. I have unspooled the thread of my life to examine all the ways God has been near, and it has left me breathless with thankfulness. There is a good portion of loss, a surprising amount of grief. But there is so much grace that I could never find a vessel large enough to contain it.

I have wondered why at times the Lord allowed certain grief and at other times only brushes with it. Why did my mother leave the ICU with a full recovery ahead of her but the man next door was unlikely to wake up? Why do we have thirteen years of infertility attached to our histories? Why do my husband, sister, and I all have lifelong chronic illnesses? Why did we get to keep our son? Why did my grandmother suffer from Alzheimer’s cruel grip for more than six years? Why didn’t we get fired from church ministry a decade ago? Why am I sitting here free from physical pain when my life used to be characterized by it?

Why are some days suffering and others grace?

Why is it so hard sometimes to tell the difference between the two?

It’s good to lay out the past and remember where you’ve been. In detailing the gifts and griefs and the blurry line between the two, I find one constant. The steadfast love of the Lord is the thread that stitches together my past, present, and future. He’s sewing something beautiful, something that’s connected to a much larger tapestry. It’s hard to trace the pattern. I can’t even see it most days. But I know He’s pulling together the threads of joy and suffering in your life and mine, and He’s continuing the story He planned before anything existed. On the days when the thread looks frayed and faded or maybe pulled so tight it could snap in two, this is when we remember that the One who’s weaving together our future has never lost a thread, never dropped a stitch, never made a mistake. His story will be good no matter what, and He will use the pattern that draws our eyes to the unifying thread the most. He will use what will keep our eyes attentive to His presence and His steadfastness the most.

Maybe it involves long nights in a hospital waiting room, or maybe months making trips to a cancer treatment center. Maybe the pattern includes a pregnancy test that just won’t turn positive. Or a loneliness that presses your chest with grief every day of your life.

Sometimes the pattern feels like the wrong one. Wrong design, Lord. Pick another template. I’ve said as much to Him before. This was not a good plan, Lord. I would have done it differently. But my plans would never have involved me laying face down on the floor in my living room pleading with the Creator of the universe to be near to me. So, I never would have seen Him answer that prayer in a thousand different ways if not for the grief and pain that put me on the floor in the first place. I think it comes down to what dictionary I’m using to define good.

Here’s what I know: the Lord never withholds what is good from His children (Ps. 84:11). He will never keep from us anything that would have been for our good. He even uses what is evil or broken for good because He is the Redeemer (Gen. 50:20, Rom. 8:28). If He has said no to some dreams or ended other ones, it is because He has seen the finished project and knows the way the seams should run. We can trust the One who designed the pattern. When He seems to be withholding good things, He’s giving us everything we need. When He closes a chapter, He’s giving us everything we need.

It’s Him, friends. What we need is always Him, and He always meets that need.

His love is high and deep and wide. It fills in the thin places where our doubts about His goodness thrive. When I look back at the story He’s written thus far, I know I can trust Him with the parts I haven’t read yet. His nearness, the way He has loved us with His nearness—it is the constant. It is the thread that holds it all together.

During the days of my mother’s brain tumor diagnosis and surgery, she and I came to study Psalm 139:5 separately. Neither of us knew that the other one was holding tightly to the same verse.

“You hem me in, behind and before, and You lay Your hand upon me.”

I can’t think of a more assuring promise than to know that the Lord has completely surrounded us with Himself.

There is no stronger, more binding thread.

 

 

 

 

Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov on Unsplash

There’s Blessing in the Longing

I want to run away from these words.  I hit “publish” so you wouldn’t feel alone when your hopes rise and fall in a tumble of confusing might-have-beens.

It’s embarrassing to admit after thirteen years of one-lined tests that sometimes I still find myself entertaining a glimmer of hope that my situation might change. It’s a small hope, nearly nothing really. But that doesn’t seem to matter. It will still swell and grow and cloud my memory of the way things have always been. I spent a week wondering if maybe everything I’d fought to squelch down over the past decade would find room to breathe in the way of Sarah or Rachel. Hannah. Elizabeth. Every alarm went off in my head—don’t do it. Don’t unlock that door. Hope doesn’t live there.

But I did it anyway. And now I’ve added an extra padlock to the door because the answer was no. The answer is always no. And deep down, I know that the answer will likely always be no because for some reason I cannot fathom, God is more glorified this way, in this continual no. I pressed down the feeling of disappointment as I tucked my kids into bed last night. There’s no reason or room for complaining here in this house where we tuck in our answered prayers with comforting regularity.

I just wanted to see You do it, I told the Lord later when I climbed into bed. I turned this way and that trying to find a position that lessened the familiar grip of physical pain clenching my lower back. It’s not that You can’t. I know You can. Why wouldn’t You do it? It’s not like it’s hard for You. I just wanted to see You do it.

How can a thirteen-year-old wound still reopen with such presence? I thought it was closed up tight. Most of the time it is. So when it opens after such a long time, I’m caught off guard by the way it rubs against my faith. I’m surprised that the remembered pain is just exactly the way it feels now. I turned over on my side and wedged a pillow between my knees to relieve the pressure of a painful back spasm that, to be honest, hurt a lot less than the ache in my heart. I turned out the light and prayed for sleep to come before the sadness swallowed me whole.

Morning dawned gray but not without mercy. I sat on the couch during the early morning hours with my coffee cup and my Bible. I pondered the words of Paul as I read all the way through Ephesians. I pictured him writing from jail. His chains were for our good, he said, and he was right. We needed him to sit in jail and pen the words about who we used to be before Jesus made our hearts new. We needed him to sit in one place and encourage us to be who we are, who we really are in Christ. Like his original readers, we need the reminder that God has given us Himself and that He is always enough.

Maybe the tears on my face haven’t dried up just yet. Maybe the no still stings as much at thirty-six as it did at twenty-four. Maybe the Lord’s path for me will never include the thing I only pray for when I think no one is looking. Maybe a year from now I’ll still feel disappointed in the no. Maybe.

But this I know to be true: God has blessed me with a lot of physical blessings as well as  every spiritual blessing. He has lavished His love upon me. He has breathed life into my dead body and resurrected my dead heart. He has secured my inheritance.

He withholds no good thing from His children, He says (Ps. 84:11). So how does that measure up when the good things I’ve longed for still go missing? If He had satisfied my every physical longing with every physical blessing, I might not feel the hollowness inside, might not learn to name it. Having every desire met might distort my vision of what it is I need. It might keep me from seeing just how much I need Him. Him. The Giver, not the gifts.

There’s blessing in the longing.

I feel like that’s the most upside-down sentence I’ve ever written, so I’ll say it again to make sure I believe it: There’s blessing in the longing.

Longing reminds me that the things I want in this life are unlikely to fill my heart. Good things, even, can turn my heart away from loving Christ the most. If their absence requires me to keep cracking open this heart of mine before the Lord and letting Him tell me what’s most important, then let them be absent. If it keeps sending me back to the Word for what I need the most, let the test always carry a single line.

There is blessing in the longing, it’s true. Oh, it hurts like someone’s bulldozed your imagined future until all that’s left is rubble and chaff. It hurts. But the ache, the longing, the desire for something to be sealed up is an internal reminder that what we long for the most is the One who spoke our very lives into being.

It’s always been Him beneath the ache. It will always be Him.

There is blessing in the longing, it’s true. Oh, it hurts like someone’s bulldozed your imagined future until all that’s left is rubble and chaff. It hurts. But the ache, the longing, the desire for something to be sealed up is an internal reminder that what we long for the most is the One who spoke our very lives into being. It’s always been Him beneath the ache. It will always be Him.

I don’t know what your heart is longing for today. I kind of hate the fact that the things I think I’ve conquered can pull me back to a place of mental reorganization. I slide the file labeled “infertility” back to its corner, hoping I don’t have to pull it out anytime soon. Maybe you feel that way about the thing you’ve just thought of without even trying. Didn’t take long to conjure up that void, did it?

Here’s the good news: it’s not really a void. It’s a reminder.

Paul says in Ephesians 3 that because of Jesus’ work at the cross we “may be filled with all the fullness of God.” So you see, it’s not really a void. Unmet desires make it feel like a void, but you can’t be empty when you’re filled with the fullness of God.

No, you can’t be empty when you’re filled with the fullness of God.

No, you can’t be empty when you’re filled with the fullness of God.  Share on X

 

 

Photo by pan xiaozhen on Unsplash

What Do You Say to the Suffering?

“It was suicide,” she said. Her eyes swam with tears that leaked down her cheeks while she explained what had happened earlier this year.

I whispered, “I’m so, so sorry,” and wrung my hands uselessly the way you do when there is nothing that will make a situation any better and you know it. The word, suicide, still hung thickly in the air between us. I wanted to swipe it away. She smiled tremulously, though, and said, “But I have a strong faith. And I know the Lord is with me.” I asked her name and told her I would pray for her. Even as she walked away, I prayed the God of all comfort would keep her heart soft while she grieves. I prayed that that strong faith of hers would remain tenacious, tough, determined.

Half a minute later, I found myself in another conversation with another suffering woman. Her unidentified physical pain sounded a lot like the pain I had described an hour earlier from the piano bench where I played the songs God had given me when my faith was as weak as my broken-down body. Again, tears that come from silent suffering threatened to spill over when the woman in front of me found a thread of hope in my story. There was relief on her face, too, in finding that she wasn’t the only one.

I love what I do. To sit at a piano and tell the story of God’s faithfulness to me in suffering as I weave together Scripture and stories with songs–it’s like rereading a book someone wrote about your life and recognizing the generous, faithful Benefactor for the first time every time. It’s thrilling to get to the denouement, the climax when the Hero rescues by simply being there. It’s falling in love with Him every time you tell the story.

I could not ask for a more fulfilling job or ministry.

But to be honest, even as one who has suffered a fair amount of physical and emotional pain, I never know quite what to say after the show. When the concert is over and I’m face to face with someone who found their story in mine, I stutter a bit and fight down the insecurity of answering the stark question of grief in front of me. My pain seems small and inconsequential in comparison to the one who has suffered more, or more recently.

I remind myself in those grief-soaked moments, though, that pain is pain and if it weren’t for the sleepless nights and anxiety-laced prayers for relief, I wouldn’t have anything to say to the woman in front of me. She just wants to be heard. To be seen. She knows I can’t alleviate her suffering. She knows I can’t promise it will go away. That’s not why she’s standing here with copies of my album clutched to her chest and tears standing in her eyes.

Clearly, she heard me when I hit that F#minor chord and confessed that I need to know that God was holding on to me in the midst of my pain. She heard the transition to D Major when I said that Jesus’ strength overrode my doubt. The weight of God’s presence in my pain resonated with her more than any chord progression ever could. The Lord was with my in my suffering. She needed to know it was true for her, too.

Whatever you say to the suffering person in your life, make it your priority to communicate that they never suffer alone. Jesus' solitary suffering at the cross means that God will never abandon us in our sorrow and pain. Never.

What do you say to the suffering?

I’m no expert, but here’s what I’ve learned over the past decade as one who has suffered a little and who seeks to minister from pain.

Here’s what’s not helpful:

Don’t promise that suffering will go away, that everything will be okay. Don’t coat grief in spiritual platitudes about the future. Don’t make promises or guarantees you have no business making, no matter how emotionally loaded the moment might be. When the silence between you is thick with awkwardly expressed grief, don’t rush to smother it with bright words. While the absence of suffering in heaven can be a comfort, it isn’t always so comforting a thought at first. Heaven can feel a long way away in the grip of pain and loss.

Here’s what is helpful:

Speak from your pain to her pain. Comfort with the comfort that’s comforted you. Remember that God is the God of all comfort who “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:4).

Simply say, “I’m sorry you’re having to go through this.” And if she needs to be reminded, put a hand on her shoulder and speak the comfort of what was won at the cross: “You’re not alone in this. The Lord never leaves your side.”

Don’t hold back your own tears. Never hold back your own tears for another’s grief. Strive to be Job’s friends on their first (and best) week. Sit with her in tears and ashes. Later you’ll get to speak truth your friend, family member, co-worker who’s struggling to hold on to faith in the midst of pain or tragedy. But first, grieve quietly with them. Lift up a corner of their pain and wear it on your own shoulders. Walk around in it and see how heavy it is. Let him grieve as often as he needs to, let her recount the same story as many times as it takes for her to process it.

When my infant son was nearly lost to me, I sat on a couch across from a kind friend who stopped by to see how I was really doing.  I needed to be gut-level honest with someone that day: “I know God is good;  I know He will still be good on the other side of this. I know I will still believe in His goodness. What I’m afraid of is the process of loss. I don’t know how to come through this and still be me. I’m afraid of who I will be when this is over.”

My friend–she just listened. Nodded. Looked me in the eye through her own tears, and nodded. She knew that I knew what was true. She also knew I needed to be heard and seen that day, that I needed someone else to hear the words that scratched their way out of my broken heart. So she sat still and heard me. Saw me. Reminded me with her presence that the Lord also heard and saw me, that He was with me. A person who simply grips my hands with tears in her eyes says a whole lot more to me about God’s faithfulness than a quippy reminder that “God’s got this!” Mostly, we already know God’s got this. We just need to unload a bit of the burden we’re carrying.

Feel, Christian.

Empathy is everything here. Feel the grief of the person standing in front of you in the church lobby. Own the pain of the person standing next to you in the pew. Be silent but present next to the hospital bed. Weep with the one who is weeping. Hold them up as they falter in their faith. Many times I have prayed over a suffering friend the beautiful words of Psalm 90:15 because I know one day when we see Jesus face to face, it will be true a million times over: “Make us rejoice for as many days as You have humbled us, for as many years as we have seen adversity.”

In pain, sadness, loss, and grief, I want to suffer well. I want the watching world to be confounded by the fierce grip of Christ on my tattered faith. But that doesn’t mean that the act of suffering is easy or enjoyable. It’s so hard. And that’s what I said to the woman who was still reeling from her brother’s suicide. It’s so hard. Simple words, but necessary acknowledgment.

Maybe it’s the most obvious statement in the world that suffering is painful, but we must have patience for those in pain. And we must make suffering a community project.

Sometimes it isn't so much what you say to the suffering that communicates so much about God's faithfulness. It's your proximity.

Never alone.

Whatever you say to the suffering person in your life, make it your priority to communicate that they never suffer alone. Jesus’ solitary suffering at the cross means that God will never abandon us in our sorrow and pain. Never.

Remind your friend of that with your presence, your grief-sharing, your love, your hope.

Sometimes it isn’t so much what you say to the suffering that communicates God’s faithfulness. It’s your proximity.

Sometimes it isn't what you say that communicates God's faithfulness. It's your proximity. Share on X

 

Photo cred: Alex Jones and Ben White at Unsplash

I Prayed for Healing. He Answered with His Presence.

These are slow summer days, stretching long at the ends from first light to last. We drink them in deep swallows, savoring the absence of hurried schedules. We sleep later than normal and wear pajamas longer than we should. The hours unspool without our notice or care. It seems a luxury. I’ve not had such a peaceful summer in years, and I couldn’t put my finger on the reason until I remembered the shroud of pain that used to wrap me up tight with fear and misery. The familiar heaviness of July heat has settled over our low corner of Missouri, a wool blanket dipped in boiling water and hung out to steam and dry above our heads. It’s hard to get a good breath when the air is so hot and wet. In being well these past 12 months, I’ve nearly forgotten the summers past when I struggled to separate the heat of a southern summer with the fire that encased my spine. It was always hot, inside and out.

Two summers past, I was on the brink of a breakdown. My health had deteriorated to the point I was losing my hair, struggling to remember things, sleeping only an hour or two at night, wrestling with pain like it was my full-time job. Physically, I was wrecked. I was also losing my grip on faith. I wasn’t just sick, I was heartsick. My husband and I were walking through a season of doubt about our vocational ministry while also watching our fourth year in the adoption process come to a fruitless close–a lot of loose ends, frayed and pulling at my confidence.

I was sorely tempted to hold hands with bitterness. She’d been a longtime companion, bitterness. But she is a difficult root to kill, the kind of plant nobody wants in their garden, a tangle of vines that spreads with ferocity. Bitterness is the kudzu of discontentment. At its best, kudzu cloaks the world in greenery, turning trees into stooped giants with draping, viney arms. It kills everything underneath, but it’s not until winter when we see the degree of damage. Kudzu inhabits what it covers. And I know from a ten year contention with it that bitterness works the same, inhabiting the heart with tightly wound tendrils that suffocate life and light.

I was afraid of the kudzu effects of bitterness again in my life. Desperate for health, for relief, for purpose, for contentment, I turned with halting steps and faltering prayers to Christ. I hesitated because it seemed too much. My health. My complete inability to have another child, no matter what avenue I tried. My internal wrestling with a decade of failing church ministry. The dizzying effects of everything at once.

The believing part of me knew Jesus was the one to run to, but the doubting part of me couldn’t hold His gaze. I was Peter sinking in the Sea of Galilee, unable to take my eyes off the choppy, churning waves. But Jesus was Jesus, chastising my weak faith while also holding on to me. His grip was stronger than bitterness, His gaze steadier than mine.

His strength overrode my weakness.

He held on to me while the pain engulfed my spine, when every rejection email from the adoption agency landed arrived, when Sunday morning rolled around and I dreaded being the pastor’s wife, when doubt felt bigger than faith.

How did it happen, you ask. How did He hold on to you?

And I would answer that He did it by walking the floors with me in the middle of the night that summer of heat and pain. Pain was the word reverberating through my body, throbbing in time with my pulse. Pain, pain, pain. 

But there was also Christ. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Reminding me of the words He’d said, of the promises He’d made, reminding me until His words were louder than my pain.

I am with you always. (Mt. 28:20)

I will never leave or forsake you. (Dt. 31:6, Heb. 13:5)

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. (Is.43:2)

I will be with you in trouble. (Ps. 91:15)

Nothing can separate you from My love, not things present or things to come. (Rom. 8:35, 38)

While I waited long for healing, for a child, for some kind of purpose, He held fast to me. He did it in every turn of the page in my worn Bible. He did it when I struggled to pin down the words to pray. He was present. Visibly, no. But in every way I needed, He was present because He has promised to be, even (and maybe especially) in pain and doubt. In the white-fisted vise of pain, I learned that Christ could sustain me. He could hold my gaze and teach me to hold His. He could deepen my faith when He reminded me who He was. I could walk on water because He was with me.

  I remember the way I called out to the Lord to heal me and the way He responded by being with me instead.  

 I wasn’t healed that summer. My pain worsened, actually. It would be another year before I would begin to experience pain’s release. It slipped away slowly, hesitant to leave me, I guess. And then one morning at the beginning of last summer, I woke with a jolt and scrambled to name the startling absence I felt. It was nothing. I felt nothing. Instead of a body on fire, there was just a body. I turned to the clock in a room bathed in bright morning light and realized I’d slept all night for the first time in six years.

These past few weeks, I’ve let myself remember those days fogged up with heat and humidity and pain and doubt. I’ve had a bit of a flare-up, and while the ache settles into my joints, there’s a stifling muscle memory there, too. I feel those surges of anxiety that used to steal my breath when I tried to imagine a future shrouded in lifelong pain. I remember the dark, still nights and my splintering sanity. I remember the song I sang to keep me grounded.

I remember the way I called out to the Lord to heal me and the way He responded by being with me instead.  

I remember the words He spoke long ago that throb with truth in time with my pulse, whether there’s pain or just the memory of it. His words of promise and presence. Words I needed then, words I need now. Words that remind me that He is enough on these long, summer days that shimmer with the heat of pain and faithfulness.

My pain and God’s faithfulness. I am not sure I could know one without the other.

 

 Photo cred: Jake Givens with Unsplash

The Story of the Song: “Hold Me Fast” (on faith and chronic pain)

 

For five years, I lived with an unnamed illness that split my body wide open with pain every single night.

I’d seen doctors and had multiple tests and scans but always walked away with a clean bill of health. Except that I wasn’t healthy. I’d been stooped over with debilitating back pain that never allowed more than 2-3 hours of sleep per night. My hair had begun to fall out, my skin was broken out in strange, silvery patches that alternately itched, hurt, and bled. I was so consistently fatigued that I struggled to focus, especially when driving or reading. My body was so acutely aware of pain that it struggled to do much more than process the sensation.

Pain had become my new normal, the period at the end of every sentence.

And I’d learned to whisper the word chronic when I didn’t think people were paying attention. Traveling brought concerns of where I could refreeze my ice packs or warm up my heating pads. Would there be an upright chair in the room once I could no longer tolerate a bed? Would I be able to feel my right leg after the trip in the car? Would the shower be hot enough to provide some relief?

Home wasn’t much better, but it was at least manageable. Three hours of sleep at night was preferable to none.

I couldn’t fathom living a long, full life in that condition. I tried not to think about the future. There was only today. Now was all I could handle.

There was one particularly bad night in June, 2015.

I could find no position, no combination of medication, no rotation of ice and heat to alleviate my pain. I couldn’t stand, sit, or lie down without excruciating pain. My spine was a constant flame, pulled tightly in a vise of spasming, waves. Two-thirty in the morning  found me shuffling across the floor in the front room of our house, hunched over in agony while my family slept. Moonlight filtered through the windows, casting a cold glow across the wood floor. Tears streaked my cheeks while I tried to find a rhythm of breathing that would still my racing pulse.

I was panicking.

And struggling to keep an even rate of breaths. I gasped for air while pain licked up and down my spine, hips, and legs.

The intensity of the pain clouded my vision, and I wondered if this was what the rest of my life would be. A cloudy, envelope of swelling, reverberating agony.

I prayed like a drowning man, like Hannah in the tabernacle, like a child stuck on the edge of a cliff, like David in the cave of Adullam, like Peter sinking on the sea of Galilee.

Fiercely, I prayed that God would heal me.

Desperately, I prayed that my faith would be strong until He did.

I was so weak. In body, in mind, in spirit, in faith.

Pain had robbed me of loyalty, and I despaired  of ever being anything other than its slave.

But.

In the quiet of that wrenching night, the Lord spoke to me.

Not audibly.

Not in some special form of revelation.

But in words I’d read and held on to from Scripture—

  • He would never leave me or forsake me.
  • Though I walked in the valley of the shadow of death, I knew that He was with me.
  • I could hold on to Him because He has taken hold me.
  • He heard my appeal for mercy.
  • He could give me faith, even when I was afflicted.
  • Nothing could separate me from His faithful love.

I didn’t have to worry so much about holding on to Him.

Because He was holding on to me.

The next morning I sat uncomfortably at my piano and wrote “Hold Me Fast” in one swift outpouring of words and chords. I pictured Peter walking on the water with Jesus while the choppy waves of the Sea of Galilee roiled and churned beneath their feet. The rolling notes of the piano riff in the song are meant to emulate that churning of the waves. When fear pulled at his ankles, Peter began to sink, his eyes off of Jesus and centered on the severity of the storm.

In that troubled place where fear and faith converge, Peter cried out for Jesus to save him.

Jesus didn’t just grab Peter’s arm. He also calmed the sea.

He was showing Peter who He was.

A week after writing “Hold Me Fast,” we began recording the album. And it’s funny that what is now the title track nearly didn’t make it on to the album because it didn’t yet exist. It took a dark night and the paralyzing grip of pain to be born, and I’m so thankful that it did because in the clench of pain, I discovered that Christ is always present in the midst of it. When the dark night of the soul tears at your faith, clawing holes in your sanity and leaving tattered shreds of hope–in that convergence of fear and faith: this is when you see that faith is a gift, and that suffering is what makes it shine.

Hold Me Fast. How could I know that He is my refuge if I didn’t need a place to hide? How could I know that He is my comfort, if not for pain and sorrow? Pain may have held me tightly in its grasp, but Jesus held me tighter.

In the fall of 2015, I was finally diagnosed with a rare, genetic autoimmune disease, and to date,  I have been in remission for one year. I have no guarantee that I will stay well in regard to this particular disease, but one thing I know—the Lord will never leave me alone in my pain. He will demonstrate His faithful love to me by reminding me of His character, by persevering my faith, by deepening my trust in Him.

Knowing Him in the crucible of physical pain prepared me to stand firm when sorrow came knocking on my door mere months after I wrote the song. God has never wasted my suffering. He has only loved me deeply in it.

God has never wasted my suffering. He has only loved me deeply in it. Share on X

I know that sounds illogical in a culture of permissive love. But the paradox of the gospel is that God is greater than our hearts, and if suffering is the means by which He can help me to see His goodness, then I can learn to say with Job, “blessed be the name of the Lord.”

How could I know that He is my refuge if I didn’t need a place to hide?

How could I know that He is my comfort, if not for pain and sorrow?

Pain may have held me tightly in its grasp, but Jesus held me tighter. It was good for me to be afflicted, so that I could learn to trust His Word.

“Hold Me Fast” is the title track from my new album Hold Me Fast.  You can purchase it wherever you buy music online (iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp).

Scriptures referenced in this post:

  • I Samuel 1-2, 22
  • Deuteronomy 31:6
  • Psalm 23
  • Philippians 3:12
  • Psalm 116: 1, 10
  • Romans 8:38-39
  • Matthew 14:22-33
  • Psalm 119:71

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