Five Minute Friday - See

This has been a long week. It is the first full week back after the holidays, and there has been a whole lot of crazy going on. Re-adjusting to schedules. Remembering what the morning looks like. Dealing with a certain level of desperation and insanity at work. Car battery dying (oops, there goes a car payment, as a friend used to say). Getting sick. Call from the nurse at school. Homework’s lost. Paper jam.

I need my community tonight. My creative, writing, hug-tight, love-hard, we-got-your-back community. And I feel like I’m having to stretch and reach and fight to get here. But I’m here. Take a Breath.

This week: See

Go

In the middle of wild and crazy – and then add a dose of unexpected frustrating – it can be impossibly hard to find my happy. To find the will to smile through the tears. To find the energy to get up and get going when my spoons are low and depleted and I don’t think I have it in me to face another round of phone calls from people who can’t find their Start button.

I’m so very grateful then, that even when I can’t get my happy on, joy can still manage to percolate to the surface. Before you dismiss me out of hand as an eternal optimist and shinning Pollyanna, you should know full well that I am self-described as fairly grumpy, edgy with sarcasm, and skeptical to boot. I mask these well when needed. Because deep down, I have joy.

Even on the hardest of days. I have joy.

It is a gift. And it is not mine. This joy comes from sacrifice and a purpose that was laid down long before I was imagined. But it was laid down for me, and it was laid down for you. This joy becomes our strength, and that strength becomes ample, evident testimony that the One who gives us both the joy and the strength is larger than circumstance, larger than roadblocks, larger than life, and larger than death. This joy becomes the stories of our lives that point to His glory. In spite of it all.

In the midst of my desert time, I used to wonder when I would stop wondering about when I would see God’s hand. I hung on to the Psalmists’ words: I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13 NKJV), but how long Lord? How long?

Now I can see that He was there all along. Beside, behind, beneath, and between. In the measure of every breath. In the heart of every cry. I inhaled His word and breathed it back out to Him in measured prayers. And I’m still doing that. Praying His words. Counting my thanks.

I will recommend the whole of Psalm 34 to you as a meditation tonight, but especially this reminder to taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. (Psalm 34: 8 ESV)

Friends, wherever you are, take refuge in Him tonight. 
See that He is good.

Stop

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