Everyone around me seems to be marching resolutely into the
new year full of excitement at what it may bring.
I feel like I am limping across the finish line of 2016 and
trudging resignedly on into 2017 just hoping that it can
be a little less difficult and wearying than 2016, yet fearing it to be worse.
Rather a doom and gloom way to head into the new year, but I
don’t really mean it quite as doomy and gloomy as it sounds.
I am pressing on into the unknown year with faith that God
holds me and our family, that He is sovereign and loving, and that He will work
all for good in the end.
It’s just that I am so very tired.
And right now my faith is the desperately clinging kind rather than
the excited kind. And I’m trying to shake off the feeling that it ought to be
the excited kind. To be okay with the desperate clinging even though the other
kind feels nicer.
It’s not that I am having trouble trusting God to do what’s
good. It’s just that I’ve seen how terribly difficult that good can be. And I’m
not sure how much good I can stand.
The last few years have been full of really hard things –
cancers and deaths and estrangements and big scares with children’s health and
pregnancies and anxiety and the constant “Chinese water torture” of all sorts
of pressures and expectations that I can’t meet and the numbing weariness of
feeling that I am disappointing half the people in my life on a daily basis.
I’ve grown in confidence and conviction about what I’m
supposed to be doing in this season of my life just as I prayed for so much at
the beginning of last year. That has been wonderful! But it has included a lot
of saying “no” to what people ask of me so that I can say “yes” to what I see
God asking of me. Because I can’t do it all. And it is so freeing to accept
that!
But I’ve begun to feel very discouraged by the incessant
pressure to do more or do differently and the lack of understanding and support
for the path I’m walking.
I am too wimpy and ungrateful, though, because I have
incredible support where it really matters, for the most part. Brett couldn’t
be more encouraging and supportive and I have a few close friends who are
also very uplifting in this regard. How is it that sometimes all the discouraging voices,
or questioning voices, seem so much louder?
Anyway, here I am heading wearily into another year without much
excitement but with a great deal of determination, actually. Because I have a
new thing to seek God for this year. Last year it was confidence.
This year it is JOY.
I am fighting fear over what this year may bring and
fighting the weariness of what I am already carrying into 2017 in the form of
these pressures that don’t seem to be going anywhere soon.
And I don’t want to wait for circumstances that make it easy
to be joyful. I want to learn the secret of being content in any circumstances.
I want to fight for more than grim resolve in the difficulties
of this life.
I want to fight for joy in the Lord! Unshakeable, unconquerable joy that persists through the
weariness and pain of life. I want my hope to be set on something far greater
and more certain than an easier year or an easier life.
It’s no help to look around at people who seem to me to have
an easier road to walk. THIS is the road that has been marked out for me by my
all-wise, all-loving, and all-powerful God. I can trust Him.
And I hope I can learn to fight for JOY in Him through it
all.