Sometimes I do my best just to look past the hard days.
I don’t tell anyone about my struggles. I’ve felt like my problems are just daily, and honestly, that’s all I’ve ever talked about.
There’s no need to share the burden with someone else. It’s my problem. I created it, and I was too embarrassed to admit it.
It feels like an anvil sitting on my chest. It’s a deep ache I push aside, telling myself it will get better one day.
Meanwhile, I go home and do nothing of substance to actually better myself.
The Unending Sorrow
Currently, my life has felt like unending sorrow and pain.
I left the Army to be a better father and husband to my then-wife. I chose to wait for a prodigal spouse to return. There were good times, and there were worse times. I’d love to say I made good decisions after that, but I’d be lying.
August 4, 2022.
I headed to work like I did every day. Soon after starting, something happened. I woke up almost a week later in the ICU, being told I fell 30 feet onto concrete and somehow survived.
I thought my suffering was close to its end.
I was wrong.
Cue two years later: I’m filing for divorce.
A few months after that, my grandfather dies.
A year after that, my sister dies.
Through all of it, I don’t recall ever complaining or screaming at God for what was happening in my life. There is one thing I’ve always made clear that I understand and believe:
There is nothing that happens on this earth that doesn’t go through God’s hands first.
Many people don’t like to think about that, because it means God allowed it, knowing the heartache that would follow.
But God listens.
He is present. Always and forever.
He means it when He says, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
As Brandon Lake says in one of my favorite songs, “He never lets His kids down.” It might seem like a simple way to think about it, but He hasn’t, and He never will.
He is the only constant that has never changed.
Why Psalm 88?
Whenever I feel overwhelmed with grief, I remind myself to go back and re-read Psalm 88.
I never paid attention to it until a sermon by the late Tim Keller popped up years ago. I watched it, and it floored me.
If you weren’t aware, Psalm 88 is one of only two psalms in the Bible that doesn’t end with praise or hope.
Tim said aloud in the sermon, “Now I always wondered, why would God allow such a book to be in the Bible?”
Then it became clear as he studied it deeply.
God Knows How We Are When We Are Desperate
Even typing that brings me to tears.
Why would God care so much about us in our sorrows that He would leave someone else’s unresolved struggle in the Bible?
He knew there wouldn’t be a neat, happy ending for the writer to hold onto.
He did it so we would know we aren’t alone in the dark.
God knows our hearts ache for intimacy. We long for a closeness that the world tries to fill with “offerings” that will ultimately never satisfy us.
His holy grief is real, watching us chase after things that hold no eternal value.
It still brings me to my knees knowing that fact.
Yet He still chose to come down here and save us.
He chose to forgive a debt we could never repay.
There is no earning anything He freely gives us.
I will forever sing His praises.
In and out of the pit.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Thanks for reading. I hope it helps you in some way.
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