A red horizon...Dawn or Doom?

It hit me recently that I don't know how to do life, and yet I think I do but I don't trust myself.  Recently I have found myself emotionally more on edge than ever before, closer to tears and closer to failure.  Failure is one of those things that I hate and have always tried to avoid.  My emotions are something that I fight and try to leave at bay.  The last two years, emotionally, have rocked me to my core, brought me to my knees so many days asking and looking and trying to figure out who I am and how I am to make it through these days. 

The very things I know will give me life and stability I seem to avoid, and oddly I seem to struggle more ;-).  But I know God in His graciousness is freeing me of some loads of crap I have carried for way to long. But AHHHhhhh the struggle to discipline myself to do that which brings me life, like working out! Why is spending time with God in prayer and bible reading often like going for a run, it is always life giving and awesome yet I so often avoid it!!

When I was younger my Dad would always say that I demanded what I wanted and bull dozed ahead never learning from other's mistakes, just doing my own things.  So with my competitive nature, and to prove him wrong, I have spent most of my life trying to learn from others mistakes so that I make my own mistakes and not the same one that a million others have made.   I have watched other people's lives, the successes and failures, and done my best to learn from them and it has really helped me.  Many pitfalls my peers made is baggage I don't have to carry with me. 

This, however, brings me to a rather strange place...I don't know who to watch any more.  The people I have most loved and admired through the years, those whose lives I desired to emulate...at this season of their life they got married, they started a family.  Here I am with few to watch, few to learn from ...forced to tread into a black landscape that is not well traveled.  On paths that are not well marked.  Sometimes I find myself wandering down a path only to find out it was a deer trail and not where I thought it would take me. 

When you look at people who are old and die with their family and friends around them they tell of the glory of their children and all of those who loved and cared for them.  The end journey is a life well lived; its blessings touted by your children and spouse and life accomplishments and 50 and 60  year wedding anniversaries.  No one is coming back from the hill top of singleness and telling me this is the glory that lies ahead.  The distance is dark with a glow of red and I don't know if that red glow is hell or a new and dawning sunrise of happiness. 

I look around me and I see failure, after failure, after failure of unending projects I don't know how to complete. 
No one is helping me tackle these mountains they are mine to navigate on my own. Which maybe is better because I always get to do what I want to, but its no fun when failure means you are the only one you get to blame and you wonder what you are even trying to build or accomplish. 

Finally, I decided to see a counselor.  I found myself just crying.  It was good though.  There was relief.  She talked about how God gives us choices and wants the best for us and I found myself getting angry because I realized I hate choice, I don't want choice.  I just want God to tell me what the best is and get it done with.  Why make me guess at all these games trying to figure out what the best is.  Then like a sweet and gentle spring rain on hard and dry ground the Lord, whispered..."I give you choices, and I make them the best.  There is no game, no trickery no twisting or manipulating me to show you the best.  I have said My plans for you are good and you trust me and seek me and I make all things good." 

It is so hard to trust that when He says "If you seek me you will find me"  I feel that when I am seeking Him, I am only finding me ...and choosing all the wrong things.  Then Paul's words of comfort that he does what he doesn't want to do come to mind and I think "Hell God, why do you keep letting me see how much I need your grace!" Not that intentionally am going out saying how can I sin so God can forgive me.  But sometimes its right there before me the choice to sin or not to sin...and I choose sin hands down readily and willingly.  Its instant release and pleasure far out shining the reality of the future death.  Playing the short game instead of the long. And then once its done and I am stuck in the mire it created I hold my head and think "WHy ! WHy!  how can you still love me!!"  And He laughs!! He laughs as He holds me saying "I chose you knowing that, knowing this." 

All of this to say that there is a future glory the glowing red of the horizon is not bleak torture but truly it is hope, it is a glorious dawn...and I know this because (though I often forget)  my Savior and best friend is walking beside me holding my hand.  He turns me to the right and to the left, and when I step in manure I should have avoided he turns it into a gorgeous flower bed.  This is why God says to put on his armor every day and He keeps reminding me that it means I need to take the time to remember who I am and whose I am, but I seldom do.  Which means the enemy gets a hay day with my identity.  He tackles me and tells me there is no hope, reminding me of only bleakness.  Oh Lord!! help me keep remembering Who you are and who you have said that I am because when I do...I see the lies of the enemy and they burn away in the shining red light of glory which dawns...which is you.

That is it...if I look at that horizon and I am short sighted to this world....then yes I very well could be screwed.  But if I look at that Horizon and know it as a long game, a game well past death...then even if I end this life alone, with no children to cry at my funeral or husband to mourn my life...I still could have lived a very good life.  Maybe that is the purpose of this season, that every person, whether married or single hits times in the uniqueness of their journey where they realize they are now alone.  No one has traveled their path, no one can now tell them the future of what they will most likely face.  And if we count our success as being how we live here on earth and what we have to show for our lives, whether number of people we shared the gospel with, money made, or healthiness of family and friends...well we may well see failure.  But if we count our success as wholly not in our hands, but in His...well then there is extreme hope because this life can look dismal but the next life is filled with glory.  We don't live for here, we get to
LIVE for HIM and He is good, He is always good!

Comments

  1. powerful words, I have only one edit :) The last line, " We don't have to live for here, we get to LIVE for HIM and He is good, He is always good!"

    It is all about choices :)

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