Micro Musing: When the Waters Swell & the Anchor Holds

Anxious.  Panicked.  Peace, Lord?  I need Your presence.  But the swelling waters of my heart didn’t calm.  Midnight.  2am.  4am.  Where are you, Father?!?

I don’t want to deal with the newest way my life has changed in a blink of an eye.  I feel myself being engulfed in a wave of numbing emotions.  How can I be so numb and overwhelmed at once? 

Nine days ago, three white coats walked into my ER bay to tell me I had a brain abscess.  Over the previous days, I had slowly lost all sensation on my left side.  I was quickly transferred to a larger medical center for neurosurgery.  I blinked and everything had changed… again.  My throbbing bald head and headband shaped incision reminded me that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

So in the swelling waves of change, what is certain today?  Can I find my Anchor of truth to prevent my drifting emotions from taking over?  I long for Truth to override.

Change and hardship are real. But my Jesus doesn’t change.  He is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.  He is love.  He is peace. He is hope.  Most certainly, He is.  And there I fix my eyes.

In the beautiful words of Kate Bowler, “Blessed are you in this terrible wonderful now. Fumbling around for the right words. You need so much and it seems impossible to say it all. Blessed are you for whom prayer feels hopeless, disappointing, and futile.  Blessed are you and your radical honesty, in the ways you speak of your grief.  Blessed are you as you learn to trust a God who hears, who listens, who hasn’t left your side, who prays on your behalf, interrupting those deep groans you can’t quite put into syllables or sounds. Blessed are you as you settle into acceptance. And blessed are we who live here in the someday but not now.”