I'm not one who typically runs to the Lord in times of need and despair, and if I do I typically run to prayer and not to the Word. There are certain things I know about myself, and this is one of them. I'm a military brat, I run to myself, retreat within myself and draw on my own strength to deal with things that are hard. Its incredibly tiring and not how we were created to confront situations.
I'm also not an emotional person. That's another concrete fact about myself. I'm a military brat, I was taught to put on a facade of strength because I'm supposed to be strong. I'm slowly learning that I'm broken, that emotions are okay. About a year ago a wise person preached at our church, and he said something along the lines of "we should be praying for our emotions to be aligned with the emotions of those in scripture." I shouldn't apathetically be reading the Word. If the Israelites are crying, I should be crying; if the disciples are dancing with immense joy, I too should be dancing with immense joy. This idea rocked, and continues to rock, my world. The notion that feeling is godly, that I am not called to be numb, but rather to have my heart in line with the Lord and therefore my emotions as well is just something that I can't really comprehend.
Today this two ideas came slamming together in my life. One of my teammates called me with news that saddened me deeply. It didn't directly effect me in any way, but I felt. I was sad, and distracted, and frustrated, and mad at a string of events that didn't effect me and that I had no control over. As I sat trying to study for a test I was overwhelmed, distracted, on the verge of tears, and unable to comprehend why this was happening. My first instinct was to write because I'm weird and that's how I process my lack of emotions, but being aware of my tendency to shy away from the Lord in times like these my second instinct was to pray. But I'm also aware of how quickly I run to that rather than God's living Word, so I decided to go there. To the word.
As it turns out I opened right a passage that helped make the situation vividly clear. It didn't reveal God's specific purpose, but rather his heart behind why this happened. I was still overwhelmed, but I also began to feel a sense bittersweet joy. I'm still mad that this had to happen to my friend, that hard things have to happen, but I'm joyful because this means that the Lord has great things in store, that he has something in the works that we aren't even aware of yet.
As I was reading through John 15 this morning (my favorite right now, check it out and dwell on it) I wrote in the margin, "Abiding in Jesus means that he will take away things that will hinder my ability to produce fruit. It won't always be easy, but it will always be good because God is good." It's cool how the Word can change attitudes toward a sucky situation in short amounts of time, and that God really does work things out for good - even if we can't see that initially. It's cool that the Word really is active and able to relate to my crazy and broken life.
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