Much Afraid

Sometimes and often I have that failing feeling - I, like wool unwound and spinning helplessly across the floor.  

I wish for the miraculous - that change would transform this inner torment and right quickly, that only peace would remain.  That I could love well and deeply, especially those closet to me when sometimes it is so challenging.  I wish that pain of soul, spirit and body would be eased, thrown off - the leaden blanket that keeps me stooped - lifted off of my shoulders.  I wish that I would not be filled with anxiety and that the precipice of cliff that I sometimes feel I am free-falling from would be instead - a meadow, tall sweet grasses, blooms fragrant and lovely, this a bed to lay on, not the nails of dis ease that pillow my thoughts.

I wish the journey to wholeness would not be so snail-creepingly slow, so very laborious and the mountains I am climbing to reach the summit would not be so sheer and high.

I feel very much like little Much Afraid in Hinds feet on High Places, who has been given Sorrow and Suffering as her companions and would like very much to exchange these companions.  The Great Shepherd though He walks with me and talks with me, doesn`t give me what I want and I would turn to Him and plead for respite.  I am deeply weary from years of physical pain and years of emotional turmoil.  The grief of loss of dear Seana cuts deeply into my already fainting heart.

I wonder if habits of a life-time can be shifted, so that healthier more productive choices can be made, and I realize at the same time that some of these habits are indeed being shifted. If I look back even recently, I can see adjustments, different ways of doing things.  There is progress after all.  The quote I saw the other day `no matter how many mistakes you make or how slow the progress, you are still way ahead of everyone else who isn`t even trying,`` applies here, to me, and so I can have hope; eat the sweet, juicy fruit of hope, hope that energizes, hope that lifts.

This deep malaise comes from physical exhaustion, from health issues with no easy solution.  The body affects the mind and the mind affects the body.

I do try to remind myself that this weakness, this inability is really a gift.  That in my utter inability, in my complete weakness He can shine through me.  His strength infused into me.  So one more day, one more moment, somehow grace-breathed I go however haltingly forward.  This race I run albeit slowly, has a Savior who walks with me, a Comforter who advocates for me, and a Father who stands at the finish line cheering for me.  So I endeavor to ``turn my eyes upon Jesus and look full in His wonderful face.``  There is now no condemnation in His eyes, those beautiful eyes, only great, great love and much tenderness, and grace, grace abundant.

I, though full of questions, fears, and trepidation remember that ``in the midst of my lament, in the midst of my sorrows, His mercies are promised, new every day... J. Luscombe``

So onward I will go - looking around every corner for His new mercies.

Every day.