Advent Day 5: A Confession

I have learned a great deal thus far about the old prophets and why they were sent to the people.  While Isaiah's prophetic words of Christ to come are powerful and moving, especially at this time of the year, it was not that which most impressed me.  

No.  What most impressed me was Jeremiah's willingness to speak honestly and truthfully to God about his own doubts and frustrations, to cry out over the hardships and struggles he faced.

I can identify with Jeremiah's dismay at the things he experienced.  If I am to make an honest confession to God, I have been resentful and angry over many of the things we've  experienced over the last few years,  Some were hardships that we experienced, some were difficult things that  our children experienced.  It has seemed at times that the difficulties increase greatly in intensity as we go on.   Even though I have not been blind to the blessings in my life, I have steadily hardened my heart at what I felt was the unfairness of much. 

But the culmination has been these past months.  Life change, economic change, the increase needs put before me, weariness,  Pandemic, increasing political strife, things that make me cringe with their obvious ungodliness,  evils that are ignored, riots and looting, men who are touted despite their transgressions, lies, cancel culture.. It seems there is no end.   

I long for a season where no drama, no great tragedy occurs.  I long for a time of peace.   But insted there is increasing turmoil.  And I must go on.

 It was easy to go through our own private tragedies when we felt our nation was secure but I began to feel ever more unsure of what the future might hold with 2020 upon us.    Would our safe haven remain so?  Would we lose what little security we have for our retirement years?   Will our grandchildren know any of the freedoms we have known?  What does the future hold?

Finally, in reading my own blog, I came upon a post from December of 2012 in which I related  an experience we'd had.    We'd gotten lost on our way to a destination.  

John despises getting lost.  He has no sense of direction and while I do, I am an empath.  I pick up his feeling of anxiety and wrap it about me and experience it fully.  It clouds my thinking and reasoning.  

But not this particular day.  This day, he was relaxed and happy.  He'd enjoyed our long drive.  "Let's just go with this..." and so we came to Dowdell's Knob at Pine Mountain, Warm Springs, Georgia.  Later we discovered that the place had been a place of worship since the 1830's, often the surrounding farmers and their families  came there to hold all day long services.

I can say truly that we felt the presence of God there.   We sat on the side of the mountain and had a long deep, heart felt conversation and eventually we wept and prayed.   Our prayers culminated with the statement that we would trust God with everything.  Everything.  

I can't remember what we were facing at that moment but I can tell you what came after.  

Our finances fell, we were asked to leave a church we'd invested heavily of ourselves in, we had a year long hiatus from attending services anywhere as we literally licked our wounds.  Our children experienced divorce and miscarriages.  We found a new church and realized sadly that we would never be allowed to become part of it as we had been in our two previous churches.  We wandered on our own again for a bit before hiding out in a church so large that no one ever recognized us in the four years we attended there.

There was a major health scare with three near death experiences within a 5 day period for me.  There were family betrayals and more miscarriages, substance abuses, financial struggles, mental illness diagnoses, more divorce.  Friends moved on and into ministries of various sorts that left us envious and we sat around and wondered when God would call us again, but we were called to nothing.  

There are been breaches in my family that seemingly will never be healed  and one long term relationship that not only hasn't gotten any better but has only escalated more and more into chaos and crises with each year.  It's not a relationship but something that feels a good deal like a sustained demonic attack.  We saw young pastors we loved and prayed for to succeed,  struggle and fall away.  Friends lost their own lives or spouses at too young an age.  We saw churches close their doors.  We were already losing heart, if I'm honest...

And then there was this year.

But ultimately what we came back to this past week, after discussing my heart ache with John, is that we must trust God.  

When we said everything, God has patiently led us through every thing.  And with each year that has passed since that mountainside day we've learned that indeed, difficult as it all is, He will attend to every thing.  Not always in the way I would choose, not always without heartbreak coming, but He has been trustworthy in every thing.  Even when I turned away.  Even when I was angry and hurt at Him for what occurred.  

Isaiah 12:2 Indeed, God is my salvation;  I will trust Him and not be afraid, for Yah, the Lord, is my strength and my son.  He has become my salvation.

Jeremiah 17:7  The man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is the Lord, is blessed.  He will be like a tree planted by water:  it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn't fear when heat comes, and it's foliage remains green.  It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.

Music:  You Are My Hiding Place