Sunglasses

Yesterday was one of those days I had to wear sunglasses on a cloudy day. 

It was one of those days where the tears just seemed to fall out of my eyes without warning or provocation.  It was one of those days that seemed so dark and so numb that you wonder how you will make it over the next year let alone the next day or hour.  If you know this place of pain, you know the loneliness of feeling swallowed up.  You know you want to run from it, escape from it, but there is nowhere to go.  You walk anxiously from room to room as if another room was going to provide the answers, to take away the pain of not understanding why you fall into this place sometimes.

You hear demons in your head taunting you about your faith and the inability of your God to come through for you right now.  You hear the voices of the best intentioned people who have said to "fake it until you make it" or "bloom where you are planted", and you wonder why you can't do that right now.  You question your sobriety.  You question why you are even here and what is the purpose of all this pain?  You want something to take away the pain, anything, but you can't touch the wine that surrounds you at every turn.  Besides, you know that that path just leads to further misery...a hell of its own.  So, you fall into a ball onto the bedroom floor.  You collapse into a puddle of screams and moans and wailing that happens so rarely that you wonder what has gotten into you.  The only prayer that comes out is, "Help me, God, help me, help me..." 

And you have to continue to believe in what He has done with your life so far and to believe in the faith of other Jesus followers before you and around you because this day seems black and cold and dark.  It is a place so lonely, a place where everyone seems to be getting on with their lives just fine and yours is stagnate.  A place where you wonder if you are doing something wrong.  A place where you have to live clinging on to a hope in Jesus with all your might. 

And so I rejoice in all this.  I will "take heart" in the midst of this suffering (John 16:33) and rejoice in God's grace to overcome it.   As much as a prosperity gospel sounds lovely, I cannot believe it to be biblical.  And in times like this, I pray to "know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death." (Phillipians 3:10)

May He be glorified.