I Don't Want Your Company. I Want Your Power.

Lately , I have noticed that people tend to fall into a few groups. Some are looking for God. Some are encouraging everyone around them to be strong, to hold on. And some are simply telling the rest of us to seek Him. I did that. I sought God. I found God. And I am disappointed. I am not angry anymore. I am a little scared, uncertain, but mostly disappointed. I remind myself of what I know to be true: He is near the brokenhearted (NIV, Psalm 34:18). I have preached it. I have written it. I still believe it.

But today, I do not want His company. I want His power. I want Him to do something. Pay the bills. Take the pain. I catch myself saying it out loud: do not just sit here and be sad with me. You have the most power. You have the only power. So do something.

My husband is gone. He was the one person I could tell my darkest secrets to, the one who helped me find a solution when I could not find one on my own. Without him, I have been stripped of who I thought I was. I do not know who I am anymore. And that leaves me with the question underneath all of it, the one I am almost afraid to ask out loud. What is the character of God? Is He loving? Is He kind?

Here is what I keep coming back to, even on the days I do not feel it. I know God does not intentionally hurt me. Life happens. It sucks. But God is faithful, and He does care. I did not make that up to feel better. It is written into the same Scripture I am wrestling with. Lamentations is an entire book of grief poured out to God, and even there, right in the middle of the ache, it stops to say that His mercies are new every morning and His faithfulness is great (Lamentations 3:22-23). The grief and the faithfulness live in the same book. So they can live in the same person too.

Jesus never promised me an easy life. He promised the opposite. He told me plainly that in this world I would have trouble, and in the same breath He told me to take heart, because He has already overcome it (John 16:33). So the trouble is real, and so is He. And He does care. I am told to cast every anxiety I carry onto Him, for one reason: because He cares for me (1 Peter 5:7). Not because my problems are small, but because He is not too big to hold them.

So today I am not going to pretend I have this wrapped up neatly. I am still disappointed. I am still learning who I am without my husband. But I am choosing, on purpose and not by feeling, to stand on what is true. God is faithful. God cares. And He is near me in this, whether I want His company today or not.

That is not weakness. That is faith with dirt still under its fingernails. Dr. B