Hold on, Help is coming.

I haven't been blogging much these days...probably because i run from the idea of getting any more introspective than i already am. I am constantly thinking about the daunting decisions I have that stand before me as a intersection in my path. So many choices, different paths to take...with only one common thread...staying on the one I am currently on isn't an option. I don't do well with too many options. I will sit and think about each one forever and before i know it some have passed me by while I have been laying out the pros and cons of each. Life is exhausting...that I know for certain. But that's not where we end. Life isn't a streamline of days crawling along just so we can get to the next one. There is more...of this I have to be certain. I feel like I may have written this before but a mentor of mine the other day jokingly told me I just have a higher capacity to hit rock bottom then most. The good news is that the quality or lack there of that allows me to get that low is the same determined stubborn quality that can get me out. There have been numerous days when giving up was far more attractive then pushing forward. After all who wants to face a past that seems to have buried burdens hiding all over it? But isn't that such the tactic of the enemy? Isn't it so him to make us think that out past is going to be our future and by facing what was we are only going to relive it in what is right now. I'm scared. Don't get me wrong. Im not a sudden enthusiast for diving into trauma and pain...but what I am seeing more and more these days is that love wins. Hopelessness didn't win those thousands of years ago. Jesus wasn't just nailed to a cross to die and stay buried in the ground. Love won. Love wins everyday. And when we start to feel like there is no reason to keep pushing forward the Lord will, if we are willing, wrap us in his arms and surround us with His love through His people. I have never felt more loved then I have in the last week...which is odd because I have also never felt as overwhelmed and broken as I have in the past week. Interesting, isn't it? That in the time when I am the most broken and the most bound and helpless and hurting...its then that the Lord brings in more love and care then I have experienced in my entire life. He meets our needs...just not in the way we expect it. We expect so often for Him to remove the pain or prevent the painful situation...the illness, the death, the abuse, the heartbreak. But so often those things come as a result of our freewill. People's sin doesn't just touch them...it spreads and bleeds out entangling all of humanity and sickness and disease and abuse and heartbreak runs like streams through all of our lives.
This last Friday Rachel was talking about suffering at frontline. Not my favorite topic, I won't lie. But she was talking about those moments when we sit totally broken before the Lord and in total anguish look to Him and beg Him to save us. Beg Him to heal us or our dying loved one. We say God, you can totally do this and we believe it...and He with tears in His loving eyes says no. What then? I wished i couldn't relate to that. I wished more then anything I was wondering what that must feel like or how one would respond to that sort of seemingly apparent abandonment...but I understood. The answer is that God's provision doesn't always come in the form of stopping the pain from hitting us...often times it comes in the form of comforting us within it. I have a therapist who is truly amazing...such nurturing and gentle acceptance from the Lord. I have roommates who would walk to the moon with me if i asked them to...who never give up and always take every opportunity to serve me. I have friends who war with me and believe in me...never for a minute wavering and wondering I am worth the challenges and pain of walking through this. I have mentors who LOVE me with everything in them. They hold me when I cry and push me when I am wanting to stop. I have moms who check in on me and coach me when I have no idea how I will take the next step. I am surrounded...and the most amazing part is that all of it turns me back to the Lord is awe. This week I was driving in my car talking to the Lord in tears asking Him if He loved me this much to surround me with everything He has...when I have done nothing but screw up and fail and fall and walk away from Him. The thing that I don't even have capacity to believe is that He loves me more.
So its been an awful week. I lost my job. I have no money and need like 30,000 dollars to get life saving treatment. My dad's dad, who i can't stand, is dying...which just stirs up so many feelings from my past...and raises the question of why He is still alive and not my Father. I have been passing out and they think that's going to keep happening...its just alot.. I am at capacity. I really am. BUT, the Lord is good. I say that and actually mean it. Its not just words of encouragement because its the right thing to say...its the truth. I have spent more time at the feet of Jesus then I have in the last year combined. And not only do I believe He is going to provide...I believe He is providing. I see No way but I know He is the way. I know He knows I need treatment and I know the responsibility in some ways now rests on Him. He is my Father. I am just the child. I am in His hands...
All those years ago Love won. So, this is the worst its ever going to get. Life on earth is as bad as it gets...its not our home. But He created us to live this life with joy, and with abundance of His grace and His mercy. He made us with plans to reach the lost...so that more may come to know Him. So I keep walking. I walk and live each day only with the strength He gives me, because in my flesh I am exhausted. At the end of the day I have to step back and even when tears are rolling down my cheeks, say to myself, Love WON. He will never leave or abandon me. He will never walk away or tell me I am too much. He says He came to save the least of these...the worst of all sinners...the outcast and the forgotten. So I know He has me. I qualify.
I am surrounded. The mountains He moved this week were primarily the mountains I had blocking my perspective. I was afraid of that. But nevertheless, I now see love. All around me. The word I felt like He gave me this week was this..."Hold on. Help is coming." Think of the impact of that. I just think of those times when people are holding on for dear life and they lose hope and think no one will find them or see them or save them...and they give up...right before they are found. If someone would have told them to just hold on, that help was coming, wouldn't that have given them the courage to fight through another day. Its a total change in perspective. This battle isn't going to stay like this forever. It was as though He was that voice in the wilderness shouting out to just hold on...that He was help and He was on His way.
He sees the pain I am in. He sees my heart and my dreams and my desires and he hasn't forgotten me. He hasn't stopped looking or fighting. He simply says to me,
"Bethany, hold on. Help is coming."