“Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.” Psalm 26:8
Yesterday I wrote a post on “embracing the rain” and lucky me, I got to actually live it out today. The situation unfolded rather bleakly: Me, a self professed, HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) and new employee, asking questions to co-worker on a project, admittedly too many questions. (Google exists for a reason) This resulted in a later encounter with said co-worker and boss that was much too harsh, confrontational, and awkward for the seemingly quite small slight that occurred.
If you happened to read yesterday’s blog, you would know that there is only a very paper thin line separating what would appear to be a a calm state from an emotionally collapsed one for me right now.
Because of God’s grace, I managed to hold all of my emotions in until I had the safety of sunglasses as I made the incredulous walk back to my car. What the ever loving blankety blank is going on? It feels like the verse above, where there just might be an actual army encamped against me. Not only are things not working out, but they are actually just getting more screwed up!
Being at the end of my rope, my thoughts on my drive home consisted of drinking massive amounts of alcohol, smoking all the cigarettes, finding all the men, to much tamer ones like venting every tiny detail of it all to my Mom or a friend. (I did leave a pretty pathetic voicemail) They also went really dark and crept back to a place where they keep returning to, which is if you didn’t exist, it would be so much better for you and for everyone.
I believe God brought my thoughts back to my own words, spoken so confidently only the day before. Stop fighting, hiding, and trying to protect yourself. Go to Jesus and pray. Ask Him for comfort and seek the Holy Spirit’s strength to get through your trials. So I went home, got in bed, let all the tears flow out to God, and asked Him to help me make sense of why things are so out of place.
Not only did I find comfort in the above verse, I was reminded that spiritual warfare is a real thing. When we start to live for God, when we actively move to get out of bad habits and complacency and to instead work towards making a difference, the enemy does not like it one bit and he will be there to thwart us every step of the way.
But I also felt like Jesus was in on yesterday’s rain analogy when I read, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.” (Matt 7:24)
No matter what storms come against us, we will stand strong when our foundation–what we believe and what we put our trust in and how we live that out–is founded in Christ.
As Ann Voskamp signs her letters, “All is Grace.” This is how we live out yesterday’s blog of embracing the rain. By seeing God’s sovereignty in it all; knowing that somehow it really all is good. There’s sanctification, there’s possible directives, there’s being used to be an example for Christ, there’s more than we can understand or know.
So in our trials, my prayer for us is that we will have confident spirits in the fight and eyes to see beyond how things appear, trusting that there’s purpose behind the pain.
