Are You Feeling Lost and Confused? Me too!
I feel adrift at sea.
Over the last few days I’ve simply felt lost. As if my ship sunk, and in the wind and rain, clinging to a piece of the wreckage to stay afloat, is me.
Moving up and down, up and down.
Not by choice, but because what I’m caught up in is beyond my control.
Moving up and down, up and down.
The Lord in his mercy, though it hasn’t always felt good, has brought idols up to surface in my life over this past week. Things in which I’m tempted, and have fallen into, placing at the center of my life.
In particular, idols of control and comfort.
These came to surface with my daughter, some kids, and her eyesight.
Clara’s eyesight is very poor, and she’ll need glasses. Possibly some surgery if the glasses don’t help. There’s also a chance she might be colorblind. #ouch
As my wife told me this news upon returning home from the optometrist, I slouched in my chair. It had been a difficult afternoon at work, and hearing this news felt like a hard left hook when I was already backed up against the ropes.
I was struck by how much it bothered me. Which no one could have guessed, because Clara was running around the living room, smiling, laughing, and still as curious as ever as to when the next time she could eat was.
This meeting with doctor had not slowed her down one bit, so why was it doing so to me?
It was actually a few days earlier that I witnessed Clara for the first time getting bullied at a public park by some girls a few years older than her.
Naturally, she was running from one part of the playground to the other, and it being the time it was, there were tons of kids doing the same.
Tons of kids running, and tons of parents watching from a close distance, moving their heads like spectators at a tennis match.
Clara ran into a small playhouse, and as I made my way over I heard someone shout something. As I peered in, I saw Clara sitting on a seat and 3 girls around her. One girl had what looked like a straw and was pressing it against her cheek.
I’m like, “OK. Let’s stop that and not do that again.” There was a Papa Bear in me that was ready to blast those girls.
Within seconds Clara starts crying because she didn’t like that girl touching her with the straw. I squatted down and we debriefed, went home, and then I taught her the below.
SHOULD. THE. NEED. ARISE! I’m not that bad of a parent.
What surfaced there, surfaced because of the eye doctor, and it’s what caused me to slouch into our living room chair.
I don’t have as much control as I think I do.
There is a lot of life that, I think because of privilege and wealth, allow me to be more of an acquaintance with my lack of control, instead of realizing how much closer we really are.
While acknowledging what I can control, there’s a vastly greater amount of things that I simply can’t. I can’t control what people say, or at times even do, to Clara. I also can’t somehow make her eyes stronger, or keep her from eventually needing surgery.
By God’s grace, as he continues to grow me by his Spirit, I realize some of my frustration from the above is because of my lack of control. I turn to Jesus, who has open arms of grace and truth for me, confess, and repent.
There are other times, as he continues to grow me by his Spirt, that with my frustration over the reality of my lack of control I run to my other idol, comfort.
Whether it’s another show on Netflix, thinking about dinner possibilities, or a tasty treat, I want to shovel piles of comfort into the deep need that God in his mercy is revealing.
I feel adrift at sea, and lost, but God’s Word reminds me that I’m not.
Jesus in speaking to his disciples as he’s about to ascend to the Father commissions them powerfully to the world with the Gospel, and at the end of these few verses (found here) ends with this:
“…And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:20)
God sees me, and although at times I feel like I’m alone or lost, he’s with me. He’s intricately aware of who I am, because he made me:
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:13–16)
What I love about the Lord is that I don’t have to pretend with him. I don’t have to say a certain phrase to unlock his kindness towards me, or pray in a certain way so that he’ll hear me.
Sometimes I feel like a kid who has just been bullied, and I’m a hot mess, confused, sad, hurt, and other emotions. I praise God that when I’m most vulnerable, that the Lord doesn’t say, “OK, now go clean yourself up. You have boogers everywhere. You don’t need to be crying. C’mon now!”
I love that I can simply approach him as the hot mess I am on most days, and he squats down, looks into my eyes, embraces me and says what most people do, but can’t fully understand, “I know.”
And I’m loved fully and completely, not because of who I am, or what I can bring to the table, but simply because of who he is, and what he’s done for me through Jesus.
Take heart, Soul.
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6)
