How can you garner the strength to go on when it feels like your living is in vain? How can you come out of the darkness when it’s a struggle to find the switch to the light? What are you to do when it seems like grief has taken the place of grace and fighting overshadowing your faith? How can you manage when it seems like you’re by yourself or when it seems like trouble is on every side? What are you supposed to do when you look in the mirror and see bruises from the person who vowed to love you through sickness and health? What becomes of you, now, that your normal is anything but? Asking yourself the questions, who am I and how did I get here? Trying to rationalize why you’re stuck in a place that’s causing more pain than joy. Looking for someone to lean on? Calling and texting for someone to talk too? Searching for something to help you fill the void. Seeking relief from nightly pacing and daily crying until your body hurt? Who can help you answer the same questions you keep asking over and over? Why me? What else? When will it end? How can I come out? Who can I run too? And where is God?
Well dearly beloved, stop trying to fill the void because you might fill it with someone who looks helpful but only makes things worse. Stop trying to find someone to lean on when God is using this time in your life for you to learn to lean on Him. Stop trying to make sense out of something that God is allowing to happen. How do you know it’s God? When your praise exceeds your pain. What do I mean? When you should have lost your mind but instead you rejoice. When you should be hopeless about your house being foreclosed on but instead you shout. When grief should have closed your mouth but you still show up with praise. When you’ve been so faithful yet cancer keeps showing up and instead of choosing to die you dance. When you keep getting defeated in battle and instead of breaking, you still believe God. I don’t know who you are but it’s not time for you to give up. Praise in spite of what it looks like because your access to THEE everlasting never gives out. And as long as you stay connected, stay praising and stay faithful; even when it’s the darkest, you’ll still survive. This is why you have to know that when your praise exceeds your pain, it’s God working. #Psalm142
Lakisha, the Author 