December 8, 2009 | Mama Smith

the fight

We’re now into week #3 of various illnesses circulating through our house. Since Thanksgiving, someone has been sick consistently, with most of us on to round two by now.

I actually broke down in tears this morning after Matthew left for work and Levi had puked up his breakfast. I put on a movie for the boys, walked to my room, grabbed a pillow…and promptly began screaming and crying into it.

No, I’m not going crazy, I just had to just let go for a few minutes to get sane again. Sometimes I have to be brutally honest before I can believe truth again. Asking God why it’s been one thing after the other this month, why no respite, why having to deal with what feels like is way more than I can bear this morning. Without being honest with myself – because Jesus already knows whats bubbling and boiling inside me – there’s just too much anger/frustration/resentment clogging my ears to hear again the truth.

As I cried, I heard a song playing in the kitchen, “Your love is better than, your love is better than, your love is better than anything, Jesus.” Did I really believe that in that moment? That his love was better than having a house free of vomiting, feverish children? Better than a healthy, strong body for myself? Better than easy circumstances? I knew I didn’t. But I desperately wanted to.

And that’s all it took. That weak, pitiful “yes”. Yes, I want your love to be sweeter than anything. I want your love to sustain me through really, really rough and exhausting circumstances. I want to fight to know that love.

It doesn’t always happen this quickly, RARELY, I’d even say, but this morning, that’s all it took for a fresh breeze of reality to rush through my bedroom and into my heart. There is no overspiritualizing or exaggerating going on here. This is what the Spirit LOVES to do for us! To revive, refresh and sustain his dearly loved children. To rescue them from their despair. All it takes is a yes, no matter how pathetic or frail.

I couldn’t believe that one moment I was sobbing and the next I was so overwhelmed with his love for me even in my self-pitying state, with his desire to intimately meet me in the messy, gross reality of living in a fallen world and in a fallen body, and with joy that can be had in the hard, hard, HARD moments of life. He just simple wants us to come. To ask. Why is that part always the hardest?

There’s this refrain they sing often on the IHOP webstream, that is my faithful companion through the day…

I was made for, I was made for, I was made for love…Now I have a purpose, now I have a destiny, you made me for your glory…No one else can love you like I love you Lord. I was made unique in your heart, I was made to bring you joy.

He wanted my unique love today. He wanted to enjoy me this morning. To be filled with joy over me. That will never cease to blow me away.

But that is exactly what presses me through those miserably hard moments when I have one of two options : to take path #1 – despair, self-pity, anger, overwhelming exhaustion – or path #2 – admitting the crappyness of my circumstances and yet realizing how very minuet they are in comparison to HIS love for me, that offers joy, rest, and freedom from all things that attempt to entangle me and weigh me down.

It makes no sense in my head how that happens. It makes no tangible sense that I would feel so overwhelmed one minute and so light and free and peaceful the next. Other than the reality that Jesus is alive. That the Spirit is on the move. And he does ache to rescue his children. He just wants us to come. To offer our weak glance. To ask. To relent. The hardest part of the whole package.

It may sound masochistic to some. But for me, I’m realizing that life will never get any easier. There is pain and brokenness and sadness much deeper than just having sick kids for 3 weeks. I believe this is all apart of living in a fallen world and that there will be a day it will all end. When every tear will be accounted for and wiped away. But for now there are lots of tears. Lots of heartache. How do we survive? How do we keep fighting? Are we just supposed to suck it up and survive the pain?

I seriously think not. I think there is joy to be had that has nothing to do with our circumstances or what we “feel” moment to moment. I think there is a joy that goes much deeper and can actually trump our feelings. What? Isn’t joy a feeling? Sometimes, but not always. I’m beginning to see in my life, it’s more of a state of being.

Falling head first into an ocean of love that is wider, longer, higher, and deeper than I’ll ever fully grasp in my limited human mind has begun to produce a joy that has nothing to do with my day to day emotions or feelings. It’s something that grounds me to a reality that despite ALL else, I am wildly adored by a God that right now is stunning angels beyond what they can bear, so much so that they try to cover all parts of their body while crying out “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY!” (Is. 6). That that God wants me should utterly change the way I view everything that comes into my life.

It doesn’t yet, but oh how I want it to. How I want to inch along towards understanding that stunning truth more and more each day, with each hard circumstance that comes my way. How I want that for all of us. Dang, what kind of crazy people would we be if that truly gripped our hearts?! Bring it Jesus!