My lovely Grandmother Marion, the one we tenderly docked 'Poppa', passed away this last week, and though it was not sudden and I had the extreme luck of saying one last goodbye to her in California, which was joyful, if not tinged with the shadow of what was soon to come, I am still grieving quite heavily.
Tears have become my drink of choice it seems.. I feel like the Psalmist David, when he lamented, "My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say to me, "Where is your God?" Not only am I grieving her death (as well as celebrating her inevitable new life), but things have been tense on the home front as well. Conversations have been strained and I am exhausted with back pain as well. So when I awoke this morning late, hurriedly got the children ready for their school day, and returned home, I sighed, and loaded the washer with number one out of possibly 8 loads that needs to be washed today, and went to my room to read the devotional I haven't picked up since April 2nd.... and God met me in such a powerful way. Sometimes this happens, where the lines of this book, Streams in the Desert, are God's spoken words to my very soul. He uses it to speak hope and life to the hopeless and lifelessness in me, awakening the deadened slumbering places in my heart. And the stone of my heart is transformed into soft, mushy clay. I needed this more than words could say today. It spoke of keeping faith in the path God was taking me on, and re-iterated the promises and words that have been a great encouragement in this hard season we've been traversing through.
The main thing is that moving to Bend has been equal parts the best thing and worst thing to occur in our marriage. Best because we had to "leave and cleave" in every single way. It worked into our relationship a oneness that I don't think could have happened in California surrounded by so many family members and familiar faces. We knew not one person when we sojourned here. Worst because I feel we have lost everything we began with. The most important things have become distant and foggy. We have church-hopped to no end, which is exhausting. I can't be completely honest about all the things I feel here on this page because it would be too hurtful to some who might stumble upon these words and take it the wrong way, but I am so so tired. When I returned home to California to visit my ailing Grandmother, I was able to spend a lot of time outdoors and with old friends, and my soul was so refreshed and restored with life that I had forgotten existed. Fellowship with people burning with the love of God, worship that I have rarely experienced living in Bend, a warm-hearted zeal that resides there for me, that I had put to sleep because the lack of it had become too taunting and depressing. I drank in the green of the hills and the moss of the oaks and the salt of the ocean, the brilliance of the wildflowers, the hum of life, as if I was a starving person who hadn't seen color in years. I realized my heart had wilted here in Bend.
My children were filled with joy and my son was more happy than I have seen him in years. I want so badly to return there and it was spoken that we would, but then the old demons of despair crept in, telling me there was no way we could survive there now. It is too expensive, it is too out of reach....
So when I opened this book this morning, and this is what poured forth from it, it was like God was opening up my eyes of faith to fix them on this spot that He was pointing out, that I had missed in my futile vision, since I was looking from a limited and fleshly perspective, restoring my hope:
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive by his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. (Hebrews 11:8)
Abraham "did not know where he was going" - it simply was enough for him to know he went with God. He did not lean as much on the promises as he did on the Promiser. And he did not look at the difficulties of his circumstances but looked to His King - the eternal, limitless, invisible, wise, and only God - who had reached down from His throne to direct his path and who would certainly prove Himself.
O glorious faith! Your works and possibilities are these: contentment to set sail with the orders still sealed, due to unwavering confidence in the wisdom of the Lord High Admiral; and a willingness to get up, leave everything, and follow Christ, because of the joyful assurance that earth's best does not compare with heaven's least.
In no way is it enough to set out cheerfully with God on any venture of faith. You must be wiling to take your ideas of what the journey will be like and tear them into tiny pieces, for nothing on the itinerary will happen as you expect.
Your guide will not keep to any beaten path. He will lead you through ways you never would have dreamed your eyes would see. He knows no fear, and He expects you to fear nothing while He is with you (He's always with you).
a poem:
The day had gone; alone and weak
I groped my way within a bleak
And sunless land.
The path that led into the light
I could not find! In that dark night
God took my hand.
He led me that I might not stray,
And brought me by a safe, new way
I had not known.
By waters still, through pastures green
I followed Him - the path was clean
Of briar and stone.
The heavy darkness lost its strength,
My waiting eyes beheld at length
The streaking dawn. On, safely on, through sunrise glow
I walked, my hand in His, and lo,
The night had gone.
Annie Porter Johnson
