Walking In The Dark

January shaped up to be quite a bumpy month for me. I had great hope for the new year not only in myself but life.

However, circumstances were interesting to say it nicely. My youngest daughter had basically been sick since July 2014 with everything from colds, allergies, constipation with ER visit, molescum, strep, and multiple ear infections. Capital Bless It. That is a lot for one little 4-year-old body to handle in such a short amount of time.

So I made an appointment with a homeopathic doctor to get to the root of the problem and turns out she has Candida along with immune deficiency, food sensitivities, and large intestinal stress. The answer is supplements and a gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free diet. I don’t know if you know much about changing diets, but it is not easy, especially with a young child. Then, in the same week, my car which is used but only 7 months old with us decided to break down to the tune of thousands of dollars. To top it off, I keep losing babysitters which I desperately need during this busy season of work. Bumpy road. Discouraging. Frustrating. Challenging.

I know these things are not life-shattering circumstances and some people have it much worse, but they are still a big deal to me. I do believe that God cares about the things that are big to me even if they are smaller in comparison. My circumstances seem to reflect the weather of the moment — gloomy, gray and rainy. As I sat down to write to you, I felt like I needed to write to myself. Join in while I counsel myself.

Here is what I would say to myself…

Sometimes we have to trust God in the dark, gloomy, rainy seasons of life. We don’t know what He’s doing or why certain things happen. It’s hard to trust Him in the dark because it is scary, lonely, uncertain, full of questions and frustrations. Full of “why” and “if only” and “what if”? We bought that used car in order to have a cheaper car payment and become debt free quicker. Didn’t God realize that we tried to be wise — that we had honorable intentions? Does it ever feel like to you that the rug got pulled out from under you? You finally found the man of your dreams and out of nowhere you break up. Or maybe you have tried for years to get pregnant only for it to end in miscarriage. Maybe your husband continues to struggle to find a job and job after job doesn’t work out. I think we all knows what that feels like to seemingly have the rug pulled out from under us. And sometimes the more often those kind of things happen, the more distrust brews within us.

In moments of darkness, when I feel like I’m alone, I turn to the Psalms for comfort. There is a Hebrew word for “trust” used 181 times in the Old Testament and of those instances 50 are found in the book of Psalms. The word trust in the Hebrew that I’m referring to means, “to know that the rug won’t be pulled out from under you.”

Should I write that again?

I’ll pause while you go back and read it again. God in all his sovereignty inspired a word that reflects the very feeling that is invoked in us when life becomes difficult.

“In you our fathers trusted (that the rug won’t be pulled out from under you); They trusted (that the rug won’t be pulled out from under you)and You delivered them. To You they cried out and were delivered; In You they trusted (that the rug won’t be pulled out from under you) and were not disappointed.” (Psalm 22:4-5, NASB. Emphasis mine.)

That verse takes on a new meaning when you read it with the definition inserted. It feels like God is saying, “Relax! I’ve got this under control.” His plan and desire is not to disappoint you. It is not to shame you. It is not to cause you to lose confidence in Him. When we know that He will not pull the rug out from under us it helps us to believe. He is sovereign. He is in control. Life is not spinning out of control.

He is fitting everything together perfectly even when it makes no sense at all to you. My circumstances may not change in the moment, but trust brews confidence in Him.

For me, today, I want to wake up with belief — belief that God will not pull the rug out from under me. God may not do what I think He’s supposed to do, but God always does what needs to be done. And because of that, I can relax. I know from experience that is easier said than done but in this moment, choose to trust. Tomorrow, when you wake, choose to trust. When the rain comes again, choose to trust.