Not all agonies are ones that can be shared during a church service, or even a small group meeting. Sure, we can request prayers for those grieving the death of one they loved, or people facing surgeries or disease, we can request prayer when we are searching a new job, or even for a pet who has gone missing, but often the things that rip at our souls are never shared with others, only with our God.
We might never share those heartaches, but they are so very real.
We cry our tears freely into the depths of the night, and then powder our faces so as to put one foot in front of the other the following morning.
We pour out our broken offerings in the quiet of the night, as we cry out our query from the words of Isaiah (55:10) “if your word does not return to you void, what word did you whisper in my ear?”
I have loved you with an everlasting love …
And we stop, and listen … because those words that our ears heard, our mind, heart and soul cannot imagine that they have truly been said to us. But, again, we hear them …
I have loved you with an everlasting love …
And the tears continue to fall, and the heart continues to ache, but the soul is quieting, because we have heard,
I have loved you with an everlasting love …
We have heard it, and we know that through those words our Creator is with us, seeking us, pursuing us, as a lover seeking his beloved.
The ache is still there, and inside is shaking like that tree out into the dark of the night. Why is that tree swaying as if being controlled by vicious gusts of wind? It is, after all, a still and quiet night? The tall pines and cedars do not shake and sway. It is as though there is a breeze that can only move the weak, the fragile …
I have loved you with an everlasting love …
Do the strong hear those words? Do the powerful hear those words?
I have loved you with an everlasting love …
Or are those words the strength that makes the weak brave enough to shake, to sway, to move?
Is that tree, that one tree among dozens of still and silent trees, a picture of our advocate? Of the One who speaks to the Father on our behalf? Is that fragile tree the metaphorical equal of our faithful prayer group, who is the wind underneath of our weakened arms, whispering to our souls …
I have loved you with an everlasting love …
“You know the Beginning of School Enthusiasm? When the pencils are fresh and the notebooks are new and the kids’ backpacks don’t look like they lined the den of a pack of filthy hyenas? Moms, remember how you packed innovative and nutritional lunches and laid clothes out the night before and labeled shelves for each child’s work and school correspondence and completed homework in a timely manner?
I am exactly still like that at the end of school, except the opposite.
We are limping, limping across the finish line, folks. I tapped out somewhere in April and at this point, it is a miracle my kids are still even going to school. I haven’t checked homework folders in three weeks, because, well, I just can’t. Cannot. Can. Not. I can’t look at the homework in the folder. Is there homework in the folder? I don’t even know. Are other moms still looking in the homework folder? I don’t even care.”
itsawonderfilledlife 