A restless heart and unbounded fear is a horrible title for a blog.
I know.
But yesterday I was reminded of a time I felt exactly that.
My morning didn't start like that at all. I had written a different blog post.
Quite light, about the last days of summer and a recipe for pure comfort food.
All I had to do was press ‘send’.
But then that thought of the pain I had felt.
Of the time I had no hope,
And the hurt consumed all of my thoughts.
Maybe that is where you are right now. In a dark cloud, where there seems to be no escape or solution.
I’m sorry.
I have no easy answers for you. But I can tell you what happened to me that time.
After a sleepless night, I was too restless to stay in bed, so I got up to go downstairs. Overwhelmed, hopeless, with a head so full.
I knew the best thing I could do was read my Bible, seek God.
But I didn’t want to.
If you know me, you know how I love the 80-20. Something Joni Eareckson Tada taught me about prayer.
When life is difficult, spend 20% of your prayers and thoughts on the problem.
Then take the whole remaining 80% away from the problem. Towards God.
Ask Him: how can I grow? How can I bless others? How can I stand when everything seems to fall apart?
It was the best advice I ever got, and it changed my life.
But I remember thinking this time: Uhhh, God. Not today.
And I told Him: Twenty percent won’t cover what I am dealing with today. Not even close.
Instead of my Bible, I picked up a devotional. It was Joni’s Keeping the Faith When Life Hurts.
In tears, I started reading. Page after page.
It wasn’t one particular thought or answer I found.
But as I read, my thoughts slowly moved away from the pain that had overwhelmed me.
Outward. Towards God.
And somehow, the shape of my suffering changed.
The sting left.
The situation was still exactly there, but it was no longer unbounded.
God did not fix a thing that morning—and I’m not even sure He ever will.
But instead of the endless freefall I am so afraid of, I am held.
The hurt can be horribly messy and completely out of my control. But it’s not infinite.
It, too, is held.
And I am held.
It was the first time I realized that it was enough.
Not a change of circumstances, not even a solution, not the absence of pain.
But held by God.
Elisabeth Elliot said it like this:
"You are loved with an everlasting love, that's what the Bible says,
and underneath are the everlasting arms."
That pretty much says it all.
There is something else I learned after that morning.
It was a few weeks later.
I was on my morning walk, inside my own thoughts, thinking back to the difference between the boundless freefall I had felt and the safety of being held.
And how being held had been enough. It still surprised me.
You see, I am a fixer.
Give me a problem and I give you an Excel sheet with timed and numbered steps for how the problem will be fixed.
Then I will make you dinner, and off we go, to step 1.
But now I had peace with an unfinished situation. Unfixed.
That was new to me.
And while I was walking, I tried to picture God beside me.
You probably know that poem about footprints in the sand. You look back over your life and see two sets of footprints, but during the most difficult times, there’s only one. And God says: that’s where I carried you.
A beautiful sentiment.
And I believe that many times in life, that is the case. But sometimes it still hurts terribly, right? Carried or not.
What if I ask God if I can walk beside Him?
Not asking Him to fix or change things.
I don’t need to get it. Not even agree with it.
But trust that He’s got it.
Can I walk next to You on this one? This storm?
This is too hard for me, too painful, too unknown—or whatever your word might be.
God, I choose to just walk alongside You here.
Will You walk me through?
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