My Psalm

I wrote this the other day. You may notice that the title doesn't follow my normal format and that I don't reference specific verses. It's also quite a bit longer than my normal posts. This started out as something just between God and me, but I always think that when God is teaching me something, there's probably someone else out there who needs to hear it too. So in that spirit, I share the following:

My heart is heavy, oh God.
Sadness and longing fill my days.
My heart is empty and my desires are unfulfilled.
Fear, discouragement and grief are my food by day.
Disappointment, sadness and longing come to bed with me.

How long, oh Lord, how long?
I cry to You day and night.
I pour out my needs and my wants,
But in the morning, they remain unchanged.
Every night, they are the same.

But still, I will praise you.
I will remember the ways you have blessed me.
I will remember those moments when my heart was full.
And I will wait.
And I will trust.

In Whom else can I trust?
What else will fulfill my longings?
I know without a doubt, that You and You alone are my fulfillment.
It is only in You that I find comfort and security.
Without You, I am nothing and I have nothing.

When I come to You, I am vulnerable.
I open up my deepest wounds to You,
Because only You can heal them.
When You see me naked before You,
You clothe me in your love and grace and mercy.

Everything I am reaches out to You.
But You are already here.
My heart searches for you.
It asks, “Why are you so distant?”
But You are always with me.

Oh Lord, my God, You hold me in Your arms.
You, my Father, wipe away my many tears.
You, my Provider tell my heart, “I know”.
You, my Healer, give joy to my soul.
Oh Lord, my God, You are all I need.

Though my prayers go unanswered,
You give peace that I don’t understand.
You are my Father and I am Your child.
My heart is in Your tender care.
My soul rejoices in You.

I write this today with tears streaming down my face. They are tears of incredible sadness and loss. They are tears of hurt, disappointment, discouragement and fear. They are tears of surrender, vulnerability and yes, even hope. But more than that, they are tears of thankfulness and joy. Who knew that so many emotions could be contained in a single tear?

But God knew before this day even started that I would be sitting right where I am, writing these very words, crying these very tears. He knew, long before I did that this day would come. And I think He’s been looking forward to it.

God created us for relationship and intimacy with Him. But so often, we approach Him instead with either a disrespectful casualness or a distant and fearful formality. Almost never do most people approach Him as a child approaches her Daddy. I have a picture in my mind of my brother sitting on the steps in his house. His oldest daughter has draped herself across his arms and his son has jumped on his back and is clinging to his neck. There is a happiness on all of their faces that can only come from a place of uninhibited love for each other. Although I wasn’t there when the picture was taken, I can hear their laughter joining together in one of the most beautiful pieces of three-part harmony ever heard.

It is that kind of freedom God wants us to have with Him. He wants us to fling ourselves into His arms with all the love and happiness and trust of a child. But I find myself only coming to Him when I am sad or angry or disappointed. More often than not, the only time I fling myself into His arms is when I realize that I’m completely out of options.

While I know that He wants me to run to Him in those times, I wonder how often He watches me run to my parents and my friends with my joys and successes instead of to Him. I wonder, in those times of my greatest happiness if I don’t cause a time of great sadness to Him. I’m realizing that perhaps, I have all it backwards. If my brother’s children only ran to him when they were hurt, or had a complaint, there would never have been an opportunity for that picture that I love so much to have been taken. And I think, when we only bring God our brokenness, we have an incomplete and singular relationship with Him. And I think, that breaks His heart.

As I wrote the words of my Psalm, I found that it wasn’t so much the pouring out of my sadness and emptiness that brought the tears, because those tears had been cried so many times over the course of my life. Yes, they were sitting there below the surface, but I could fight them back. But when I remembered the moments of peace and joy that God has given me lately, I could no longer dam the stream. Even now, that last sentence has brought them back.

Sadly, it has only been in the midst of such intense sadness and loss that I have been open enough to receive some of God’s greatest blessings. By way of example, I started looking for a church as soon as I moved to this area five years ago. I visited so many churches in so many denominations that I can’t even remember all of them. I begged and pleaded with God to lead me to a church. I argued with Him about the importance of fellowship. I yelled at Him for not giving me what I knew I needed. I even gave up for a while, and blamed Him when I woke up on a Sunday morning and decided to not bother going to church at all.

During those first four years, I experienced intense loneliness and isolation. I blamed Satan. I blamed God. But I’m seeing now that I was spending so much time complaining to Him that I missed opportunities to run to Him in joy and gratitude when He answered other prayers. I was so focused on what I saw as my most pressing need that I all but ignored His provision in other areas of my life.

It wasn’t until my very livelihood was threatened that I finally changed my approach. In one day, everything I had was taken away – my income, my relationships, my purpose and I was left standing before God completely empty. But it was on that day that I finally understood the “peace that passes understanding”. And it was that weekend that I was finally ready to receive the blessing of a church. God had been waiting until He knew I was ready before He led me “home”. And it was only in my emptiness that I was able to run into his arms with laughter instead of bitter tears when I finally saw Him answer my prayer.

I’m tempted to wonder if my own actions and attitudes prevented God from answering my prayers for a church family, and I suspect that they did. But rather than allowing guilt to mar the beauty and sweetness of God’s gift, I choose instead to thank Him with incredible joy whenever I get in my car and pull out of that church parking lot.

So here I sit on my couch with a cup of tea and a cat, reflecting not on my sadness or even past mistakes. Instead, my heart is full of praise for my Creator. He created me to love Him and He created me to be loved by Him. He longs for me to spontaneously jump into His arms and laugh with Him with the complete abandon of a child who absolutely adores her Father.

It is those times that I come to Him with excitement, happiness and laughter that tell my heart it’s also ok to trust Him with my fear, sadness and disappointment. I think this is how He wants it, and not the other way around.