I was excited this morning when I awoke; I had the whole morning ahead of me to write. It was the first free and clear day I have had this new year. Today I would not have to scramble for time to write my blog post at the end of the day when I was least fresh and most likely to hit a mental block. Over the course of the last few days, I have had to engage in some rigorous self-talk to even attempt to begin a writing project after 4 p.m., the earliest I have been able to sit down with a computer. When by 7p.m. I am fixated on the same sentence for the good part of an hour, I know I am fast reaching the point of no return. Normally, mornings are the most productive and creative times for me to pen my pieces. I am fresh and the thoughts flow much more freely than they do as the day wears on. By 8 p.m. my mind has nearly ground to a halt; I must pray for one last burst of clarity to satisfactorily close the day’s blog post and publish it. That done, I can breathe a sigh of relief. With a good night’s sleep, I trust I will be ready to tackle the next day’s round of writing with renewed vim and vigor.
This morning, my elation over a block of uninterrupted writing time lasted until one hour after sunrise when my daughter called, “Mom, I’m on my way to your house to pick up my computer. I have a project I have to finish before 2 p.m. “ What could I say? She has been kind enough to loan me her computer while mine is being repaired. I could hardly begrudge her for “borrowing” back her own computer for a few hours. I allowed myself one sigh of frustration and then resigned myself to the alternative; one more day of writing in my off-peak hours was not impossible as I had proven to myself over the previous three days. If nothing else, I was simply reminded that God, not I, was in control. I don’t know why I was so surprised that my day had been thrown off track; it happened often, and from past experience, I knew that God was up to the task of helping me work around daily inconveniences and obstacles.
Nevertheless, insecurity, trepidation, and fear were not shy about knocking on the door, raucously making their presence known in the hope I would invite them in as I have frequently done. My heart wanted to trust God, but my emotions were not of a mind to cooperate.
Unfortunately, I was primed to falter. The week prior to New Year’s, the furnace of affliction was turned up a few degrees. The new year’s trials got a jumpstart by using Christmas day as their platform for testing my mettle and patience, not to mention my ability to hang onto the positive as the vortex of bad news got stronger and faster, sucking me into an untenable position. What is the disaster that so riled my soul? Out of the blue--or should I say gray--my computer fritzed out on me. My reaction was like one of those slow motion replays, so shocked were my senses by this unlikely, and not in the least expected, turn of events. My computer had been fine up to this point, which only added to my consternation. I wanted to scream, “Not my computer!!! Take anything...but not my computer!” I felt like my hands had been cut off and I was left stripped of my purpose for living--perhaps a bit dramatic in the larger scheme of things, but not in my smaller writing sphere. Losing the most vital tool to keeping my sanity was not an insignificant occurrence. What was I going to do now?
That was the first domino; others have fallen in quick succession. If I thought our lives were hanging by a thread before, this last string of events have since severed it without a doubt Furthermore, if I had had any illusions that we could come up with a plan to rescue ourselves, those illusions tumbled off the cliff right after us, joining us as we plummeted downward—to a God-only–knows-where landing point. I would like to tell you that from the beginning I walked through this spell in the furnace in a fire-suit of grace, but I did not--quite the contrary—I had an impressive meltdown. It was one of my finer “woe is me” moments of the year just ending.
The only thing I know to do in times like these, short of pulling the covers over my head and refusing to come out until the calamity has passed, is to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Difficulty and hardship may seem to last for an eternity in time, but in view of God’s eternal truth, rough situations and evils are only temporary. They will pass. Meanwhile, there is not a moment of time that God forsakes us or leaves us on our own; there is never a time that He is not working on our behalf and holding us in His everlasting arms. Yet, some of the fiercest battles involve choosing to believe this.
I will end today’s post with one of my favorite “hang in there” encouragements, this one written by Oswald Chambers, “Be patient and so utterly confident in God that you never question His ways or your waiting time.”
Tomorrow—another step.
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