Like all people, I have had ups and downs. There are times when life is lived with exclamation marks, and times when it is lived with question marks. There are times of struggle and there are times when struggles seem a million miles away. There are times when we desire to live forever, and times times when we beg the Creator to take us now (I think I must have been reading Ecclesiastes lately).
Have you ever noticed that when things are going well, you rely on others less? It’s because your needs are simple, and can be met all by yourself … you don’t need anyone for anything.
And then when things are really not going well, we need others, we need help. But, for me, even if I need and even want to rely on others, I struggle to know who and how to ask for help. Heck, I struggle to even recognize that there is help out there.
I was reminded of this the other night when hubby and I were out to a restaurant for dinner. As we were talking to our server, she mentioned that she was having pain in her back, that had been keeping her from sleeping at night. When I mentioned a product that I had found to be helpful in the past, she said, “of course! I have used that in the past. I guess I was thinking so much about the pain, I couldn’t think of a cure.”
As she continued talking, I found my mind thinking about her statement, “I was thinking so much about the pain, I couldn’t think of a cure.” And I found myself thinking, isn’t that how it is when we have pain … any pain, in our life? When we hurt, physically, emotionally, spiritually … in any way, the pain takes over our thinking, our reasoning, our troubleshooting abilities. And we often fail to see the cure, the help, the solution for the pain (or at least ways to ease or lessen it).
When our pain is not a physical pain, we need a pain reliever that is specifically suited for that need. What we have to do to relieve our non-physical pain, is to allow ourselves to be held, to be embraced by someone … bigger, stronger.
For a child, there is no greater pain relief than the warm embrace of his or her mother, and father. It always amazed me how my child’s tears would disappear when I held them. In the same way our spiritual father can wipe away our tears, when we allow ourselves to be taken in by his warm and loving embrace.
Just like when I hold my suffering child, the holding may not take the suffering away. But what being held by creator God does, is that it allows one who is so much stronger, so much bigger, to hold us, comfort us and soothe our weary hearts. His arms around us, His presence in our lives reminds us that the Creator of heaven and earth cares about our heart aches.
itsawonderfilledlife 