There are times in my life when life gets so crazy and seems so out of control that all I can do is hang on. There are times when life is throwing me 50 balls at one time and I am expected to catch them all at one time. But, some of the balls I can’t even see to catch, even if I wanted to catch them. How can I catch something I can’t even see. It seems I can only hang onto and continue grasping the hopefulness that God is in control. I remain hopeful and watchful, but then something happens, I’m not sure if I start to get angry, restless, feeling abandon by the one true God, and I find myself eventually not praying. I stop praying and wait, wait for God do what he is going to do, because to me it seems as if my prayers are going unheard and I figure God will move and act when he is good and ready to act. It seems that my prayers are not doing any good, so why keep them coming to a God who remains silent. The silence is frustrating, the unanswered prayers makes me feel like I am sinking further and further into a dark hole I didn’t want to be in to begin with, yet I’m there, alone, or so it feels.
I balance in the place of peacefully waiting for answers, praising God in the waiting in what appears to me his silence. On the other side of the seesaw is my quietness, almost like I am playing dead in the middle of the road, waiting to be rescued. I can barely think, much less move, and so I lay there in hopeful expectation to be rescued and to be set free. God gets silent and so I get silent, not knowing what to say and in some ways too angry at God for not answering me in the first place. I balance between calm serenity, which I believe comes from my spirit and what feels like mental craziness, which I believe to be my flesh. There is an inner battle going on inside me, I can feel it, the fight over what appears lonely, deserted, and dark and that which I know to be true of the nature of God, his faithfulness, knowing his timing is not my timing, knowing God is working even if I can’t see him or hear him, knowing and clinging to what I know of God’s nature.
I rest in knowing that this time, like other times when God has been silent, he will eventually speak again, he will eventually make himself seen again, and while I don’t understand either, I trust and know in the grand arena of life this is only a small fraction of time. But, when the waiting becomes painful, even a week can feel like too long, and the desire to be out of the pain as soon as possible is pressing and feels demanding. My spirit demands that I praise and worship in the dark, my flesh gets angry in the response to the fear that it is really feeling.
I know in his perfect time God will ride in on his white horse and at the perfect time will draw his sword and say enough, this child has had enough. I will trust and in the times when trusting seems so far away I will praise the Lord for the fact that I know I have family and friends praying for me, lifting me up to the Lord, and loving on me. I will rest in the fact that when I feel like I am playing dead, there are people who care so much about me they go to battle praying for me. Praise the Lord oh my soul for the faith of a few close family and friends! I’m hanging on, God’s promises are around the corner.