From a letter I wrote to a friend last night:
I don’t know what to do or say. Things change moment by moment. My hysteria one hour gives way to hope for a brief moment the next only to be overshadowed with overwhelming despair the next. Talking about it seems to capture in time moments that are so changeable. I am not trying to shut you out at all. I just don’t know what to do or say. God is using this time of suffering in our lives to show me so much of my own sin. It is horrible and tender all at once (mostly horrible). My sense of my own sin is overwhelming at times and then I find myself floored by his love for me again. Nevertheless, I feel like I am being sucked in to a vortex…it is like a maelstrom threatens to overtake me and has, in fact. Wednesday I was as low as I have ever been, as the blackness of another seeped into my own soul… Yesterday and today have been similar, only today has been pock-marked by strange manic episodes where I eagerly, energetically think I am making sense of something that I see now really can’t be pinned down. There are no diagrams or equations that can depict this.
I probably am not even making sense.
…
Late last night, after I wrote this, and again this morning, I sense to the depths of my soul a call to arms. This is not the time to allow my flesh to determine my choices. This is not the time to focus on “feeling.” I CHOOSE not to allow my feeling to define what is FACT. I must cling to what I KNOW is true and what I KNOW is true is the Word of God and what God says to me in it. That is the only thing that will never change–that and the God of the Word. Those are the two things to which I choose to cling right now. They MUST determine my choices. All else is shifting sand, a vapor, a mist.
I will not pursue dreams. Instead, I will pursue the reality of my Living God who shows me the depths of His unending love for me at the cross. He chose suffering. He chose to take on the raunchiest of all sin and the shame that goes with it…he chose to be rejected by the Holy Father so that I will never have to be forsaken, so that I will never have to wonder about His love, so that I will be guaranteed the privilege of enjoying his presence for eternity.
I choose this day to serve God Almighty. I will not serve my vain imagination, my fleshly impulses that want to reach at even more trinkets to pacify me. I will not give in to impulses to surrender to what seems easy.
Instead, I choose to put on the full armor of God.
I choose the path of praise.
I choose gratitude.
I choose to fix my eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of my faith who for the joy set before Him endured the cross and scorned its shame. That joy was the people he gave his body to redeem. To justify. To perfect.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.
on the third day he will restore us,
that we may live in his presence.
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth.”
God has granted as a gift, this season of suffering. I will choose to embrace what he offers.
Though he slay me, yet will I trust him. This challenges me to my core as I would really rather he *did* choose to slay me.
Yet I know that sorrow lasts only for a night and I look forward to the joy that comes in the morning. Even now, as I anticipate the morning that WILL come, I can experience the joy in this moment that this knowledge brings.
As surely as the dawn comes, as surely as the rains come, HE will come. He will bring healing even though for now he has chosen to tear apart.
Thank you for your prayers.
