The Living Through It

Today, I’m tired.  It would be really easy for me to go off about everything I am tired of, but that wouldn’t be very productive.  Instead, I will share what I am learning in my tiredness.

 

Sometimes I think the real testing comes with the little, annoying things in life.  Not the big stuff—not having an awful fever when I had dengue, and not really when I first broke my foot.  Nope.  It’s having to deal with it afterwards for days and months that tests the patience and endurance.  It’s those things that get in the way when I'm trying to move on: not being able to carry anything in my arms without a whole lot of awkwardness (due to my crutches), or opening the fridge and a plate of fish and rice falling out from when a visiting kid stuffed it in there and slammed the door shut.

It’s not the surgery—it’s the cast. 

It’s not the death of someone you love—it is living without them.  

It’s not the long days—it’s the waking up and knowing you have to start all over. 

It’s not the shocking—it’s the irritating. 

And yet, while we hate facing it, these are the best opportunities for God to do His work in us.  The every-day, frustrating, living-through-it-all moments are where He does His best work.

Think about Job.  When all that awful stuff first happened to him, did he complain?  No, actually he didn’t.  He said, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”  Sounds real nice, doesn’t it?  But then for the rest of the book—when he’s living with his annoying, painful boils--he’s complaining to God about his life. Have you ever thought about why God didn’t just heal those boils as soon as Job proved Him right to Satan?  I mean, after that “blessed be the name of the Lord,” God could have just said, “Awesome, Job.  You did it.  Now have a good life.”  But he didn’t.  He let him sit in his pain for awhile, maybe because that is where the real test of faith is, and where the real spiritual growth happens.  Because if you can survive the living-through-it and STILL say “blessed be the name of the Lord,” then there’s something supernatural about it.  That’s God’s power doing something in and through you that you could never do yourself.

So right now, I’m asking for God’s power to help me through my irritations and exhaustion.  And I am so thankful to know that I’ll get something more out of it than a mess on the floor for the dog to clean up.

(P.S. I am also very thankful to Coby, the dog, for cleaning up the food on the floor for me).