We had a great annual July 4th party this year with the help of some very sweet friends to make it happen. Pulled it off despite all the drama just as I expected we would, though I've been recovering with my feet up ever since. Good thing I like to contemplate the sky, which from my balcony off the kitchen is like a Monet or Rembrandt in constant, creative motion. Which leads me to thoughts that flow just like the clouds.
First thought...I am signed up for future pain in 10 more days. What a strange thing, to pre-plan your pain, but I suppose anyone facing something like a scheduled surgery knows what I mean. Time to think about something else. Second thought...why am I sitting here by myself? Answer, because my family is doing normal living things and I have been set aside for a season of quiet moments. Is this bad? Am I being punished, or how should I consider my suddenly still life? Does God love me or is He busy elsewhere doing great things for someone else?
I know He loves me, but oh how many times I get close to questioning that. Never though like how I did in the season I just got cut off a week ago Friday, that four years of hair growth with all of its files of information about me. It's personal to me, this high thing that exalted itself against the love of God, your own reason for doubting would be different. What remains the same though is this, the shattered expectations which leave you thinking that your really can't trust anyone anymore, even Him. I've rarely struggled so hard to put something behind me like what I now contemplate with clouds reflecting on my iris, that to which I had attached such uncompromising expectations.
This painting in the sky tosses about the two o'clock sunshine, other moms are sitting at sports events or thinking about what to make for dinner and my family goes about its living, I come to the realization that I am backed up against a doctrinal wall. Either God is not good, or my expectations of what He would do or not were misguided, wrong, mine not His. A courtroom prosecution and defense don't usually agree to a tie so they can both go home winners, and in the same way either God or I will have to take the blame for making a mistake. It doesn't take much glorious sky watching to figure out which one of us is going to do that.
What a humiliating and painful experience that is, to admit that what I have clung to with clenched fist and spent many a day drowning in depression over was something I should not have been holding on to the first place. Ouch! It leaves me feeling like a crumpled heap on the floor, a defeated warrior who sided with the wrong army and is now lying with non mortal but painful wounds on the battlefield. This drifted by in casual conversation the other day "Whatever you think you deserve is probably a form of idolatry," and it stuck to my collection of words from God to me on this topic. Do I have the courage to be expectation free, to suffer want, to be disappointed, to live with what is, to accept? Not usually. Is that why I am sitting here looking at clouds, because I needed the time to come to this painful conclusion, to piece together all of the things I've been seeing and hearing and reading which together feel like God answering me from across the table?
I've decided that unmet expectations will keep killing my faith if I insist on holding on to them in the future, like in the next 10 minutes. It's hard to live a surrendered life, to trust God enough when things aren't going my way or anything like what I expected. Like David pleading for God to save his life in Psalm 71:12-14,"
O God, do not be far from me;
O my God, make haste to help me!
Let them be confounded and
consumed
Who are adversaries of my life;
Let them be covered with reproach and dishonor
Who seek my hurt.
BUT I WILL HOPE CONTINUALLY (caps mine)
And will praise You yet more and more.
What will I hope in continually? I will hope in the goodness of God, despite anything that brings witness to the contrary. When you look at it this way, cancer isn't compromising my health...rather its giving me time to slow down and come back to life.
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