Life Stinks
It’s depressing, but sometimes true.
Right now, for me, life is stinking.
I feel guilty even saying this because no one I love is enduring chemotherapy or in shackles.
But the fact remains.
I’m not a big believer in questioning the powers that be (ie: God), but at the moment, find myself doing just this. Why this struggle? Why now? Again???
You can’t be serious.
God, being somewhat of a silent sort, doesn’t answer me directly. I’ve spent the last week, my neck screaming at me while sleeping on the floor of my brother’s house, pondering His silence. I needed answers yesterday. I needed encouragement 20 months ago. I need communion…now.
Seven years ago, when we were in the middle of a complicated move, my dad told me this: Find something to hang onto.
Something.
Simple words, but somehow they helped.
I cling to them today. One thing, that’s all: Find something to hang onto.
As low as we sink, I find myself consistently one thread away from giving up. That thread may be a crystal clear cornflower-blue Colorado sky. It might be a day on Dillon Lake while my youngest three make moats and boats and eat sandwiches in the sun. It might be a six-mile hike up Table Mountain where my non-acclimated 40-year-old body is put to the test. It might be eating Willy’s Wings with my dad and brother at the base of the Red Rocks in Morrison, Colorado where there are no cliche answers, but eating at our old haunt and just being together offers a rare comfort.
One friend of mine lives on edge, waiting for her daughter’s cancer scans to come back clean every three months. One has a baby in a full-body cast–no one is sleeping well. One is weary with two decades of financial struggle.
To them–to all of us–I offer my father’s words: Find something to hang onto.
Suffer well.
Be of good courage.
Hold on.
This too (we hope and pray and cry in the middle of the night for) shall pass.
Love and miss you guys and was sad to hear the news of yet another job loss. I feel your pain since we went through it and can’t imagine going through it again. I have thought of you a lot over the past few days and wondered how you guys were doing. Hang in there and hang on. God has you in His hands.
I could have written this myself, were I a more talented blogger. I was mentally analogizing just the other day that keeping from falling over on your face in life is the same as when trying to a one-legged hamstring stretch: focus on one point. If you start to wobble, don’t try to adjust, just focus harder and the feeling of balance will return, if only for a few more seconds. Of course, feeling down is never helped by knowing that you have it so much easier than most people in this world. Ahhh! Back to focusing harder!
I didn’t have to move past the blog title to know that I agreed with you once again. Praying for mercy and strong hands that can keep holding on.