Category: despair

How long is your Saturday?

I’m not asking how much you can accomplish on your first day of the weekend. How many chores or ball games. How much work or play you can squeeze into your day off.  This Saturday is the dark space between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Between death and new life. Between reality as you knew it but can never experience again, and life as it will be.

Saturday is the place of death, of tears and loss and emptiness. Where hope does not glimmer around the edges. Nothing is like you thought it would be. Everything has come to a standstill.

How do you live through that long Saturday?

How do you climb through to glistening morning dew, faces you don’t recognize, but quicken your heart? A life you never planned to live?

We don’t get there by pretending it’s not dark.

That life before Friday didn’t matter all that much.

That it doesn’t hurt now.

Hollering in the graveyard may make small boys feel brave, but it can’t wake the dead.

And it won’t wake us.

We must wait. Live in the Saturday. Even if that living is slow motion, muted, arduous.

caterpillar under leaf
caterpillar under leaf

Until the sun rises.

I know some who have taken up residence in their Saturday. That’s no place to dwell.  If that is you, please, take my hand and walk with me toward the sunrise.

Leave your chrysalis and stretch out your wings.

butterfly on flower
butterfly on flower

Wait for the deeper reality, flowing through and behind.

 

butterfly
butterfly
Monarch Butterfly
Monarch Butterfly
butterfly in flight
butterfly in flight

When the time is right, we will fly.

 

“I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen. When you come looking for me, you’ll find me. Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.” God’s Decree.“I’ll turn things around for you. I’ll bring you back from all the countries into which I drove you”—God’s Decree—“bring you home to the place from which I sent you off into exile. You can count on it.” Jeremiah 29:11-14 The Message

 

 

All photos property of Jack H Thompson

Content of this blog is property of Jane Foard Thompson and may only be shared in its entirety, with attribution.

Where do I go?

Sometimes life, not the big picture, the whole world kind of life (that’s abstract enough — we can deal with it), but our personal, here-and-now life can become more than we can handle. Or least, more than we want to handle.

An adoptive mother pours herself dry, endlessly loving a child who, because of abuse or neglect before she entered his life, cannot bond, cannot receive or trust. Will her love ever be enough?

A dear one, preparing to fly to her mother’s bedside, receives a call. “Your Mom died this morning.” The words she’d hoped to say swell in her throat. And the ones she’d hoped to hear seep from an old wound. How will it heal, now?

An illness haunts, even as it evades tests and medical probing. In the dark of the night, it looms, large and threatening. What is taking over my body? What am I doing wrong?

Or the pain is diagnosed, the dread “C” word, and all the questions and decisions put life on hold. Will I be able to stand? Will I come out the other side?

Abuse, alcoholism, unplanned pregnancies or unfinished ones, unwanted babies or babies forever grieved, sterility, disability, life threatening illness, life-taking illness, unfaithfulness, hatred, dementia, mental illness or anguish, prejudice, betrayal . . .

The list is too dark to continue.

Whether wishing for escape from this life, or wishing for more days to live, we often follow a script, learned long ago. 

 

Shut down. If I don’t feel so deeply, I won’t hurt so much. Better to live in the gray zones. One foot follows another.

Give in. I’ll do what I’m told. Keep my head down. If I don’t expect anything I won’t be disappointed.

Fight. I flail at the injustice. Rail at the darkness. My fingers may grow raw, but at least I’m not a helpless victim.

Flight. I’ll run to alcohol, drugs, people (sex, or people-pleasing, or codependent relationships, or controlling), work, online or TV (mindless hours, escape, games, vicarious living, porn). Anything but stay in the pain.

Or perhaps I simply won’t look. If I can’t see the enemy, he can’t hurt me, right?

 

When it all comes tumbling down, and at some point, it will, what do we have then? When our backs are up against the wall, where do we turn?

Over and over, I run to the only one who hasn’t hurt me or failed me or forgotten me. One who calls me, carries me when I need it, heals me and sets my feet on firm ground.

Maui waves Isaiah 43:1_5
Maui waves Isaiah 43:1_5

If you have more on your plate than you can handle right now, feel free to contact me below, or use the private contact button, and I will pray for you.

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matthew ll:28-30 The Message

We are held

Today the journeys others are taking dwarf any difficulties in mine. In the past two weeks I’ve added heart-wrenching requests to my prayer list.

• A daughter has gone missing.
• A son has died in Afghanistan.
• A family is split by alcohol and selfishness.
• A mother of a one-month-old learns she has thyroid cancer.
• A young boy is badly injured by his father’s tractor.
• Three friends have fathers in the hospital with serious illnesses.
• Most of the kidnapped girls in Nairobi are still in the hands of their captors, or worse, have already been sold into slavery, or sex-trafficked.
• Another shooting on a college campus robs a life of future and promise.
• A young husband and father of three postpones the family’s annual summer mission work in Haiti to await his treatment for melanoma in lymph nodes. . . .

When I begin to pray, I feel like ranting at God.  Asking, “Why?”

It isn’t fair. It’s a sloppy, ugly world we live in.

For a moment, I sigh words from a poem I was enamored with in the ninth grade, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám LXXII

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’d we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help–for It
As impotently moves as you or I.

But I don’t stay there.

When the emotion is spent, I hear the echoes of the words of the psalmist centuries ago.

The enemy hunted me down;
he kicked me and stomped me within an inch of my life.
He put me in a black hole,
buried me like a corpse in that dungeon.
I sat there in despair, my spirit draining away,
my heart heavy, like lead.
I remembered the old days,
went over all you’ve done, pondered the ways you’ve worked,
Stretched out my hands to you,
as thirsty for you as a desert thirsty for rain. Psalm 143:3,4,6 The Message

We have an enemy that seeks to discourage us, beat us down, even kill us if possible. But Jesus came to destroy his power over us.

Keep a cool head. Stay alert. The Devil is poised to pounce, and would like nothing better than to catch you napping. Keep your guard up. You’re not the only ones plunged into these hard times. It’s the same with Christians all over the world. So keep a firm grip on the faith. The suffering won’t last forever. It won’t be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ—eternal and glorious plans they are!—will have you put together and on your feet for good. He gets the last word; yes, he does. I Peter 5:8-11 The Message

I know it’s true.

Because I know the eyes that penetrated me with love when I couldn’t go on.

I know his words of reassurance when I wanted life to end, telling me there isn’t anything he can’t work in, as long as I am alive.

I know how it felt to have Him reach his hands out to me, pull me into a meet-the-needs-of-everything-in-me hug.

And I remind myself that this world, this life, is only a glimpse of the real thing, a tiny moment in all of eternity.

And that sometimes pain is our door.

But we are never alone in our pain.

We are held.