Upheld

 "I've got you!" 

His words fall on my weary heart like syllables from the mouth of God, reminding me again that amidst the feelings of swimming in a sea of doubt and unknowns, I am still seen. Still loved. 

It's been a week of hard things - praise seeming like more of a sacrifice than a natural response, worship being forced out of lips that want to scream the age-old question of why. Discouragement sets in as my tired soul wonders how many more denials and delays it must face... how many more disappointments must be endured on this road to healing...how many more pains must be groaned through en route to birthing new things...how many deaths must be suffered leading into resurrection-glory. 

Something had torn days before as a text came through, telling me that my dear Alex's service dog...who saved him in so many ways but who couldn't save him from death's grasp...who was at his side through all the dark days and on the darkest day when it all went black...who held its loyalty to its master beyond the grave...who since brought such comfort to his parents in the loss of their one and only son...that sweet canine of a thing is dying. Cancer. With only a couple more months to live. And the one thing I'd hoped beyond hope - to see that dog one last time and re-live the happiest moments ever when all were alive and well - that thing will not happen now, and I'm suddenly supposed to accept yet another thing I cannot change and how on earth could it be happening now? Right now...as the date that forever changed my life looms ahead and as I'm thinking about that fateful night when my world was rocked with the news Alex was gone...now the dog is dying, too. It's all too much. Too sad. 

The only expectation you can have in this life is to have your expectations altered... to make dreams and watch them die...to have hopes and witness them be crushed...to desire and then be asked to accept a reality you did not choose. 

And for all the times you've lived the cycle over and over and over and over... it still hurts, and you ask God how in the world in ALL this world there can still be grace when what's in front of you feels like anything but... 

Tears pool, and I'm thinking back on all the sacrifices I've had to make in recent years - for family, for my own healing, for ministry and work - and I'm admitting to God that I'm exhausted with change. Tired of having to accept the hard no when all I want is to say yes... yes to fresh starts, yes to abundant living, yes to love, yes to happy plans and all things expectant. And it's true always: holding out hope against all hope is wearisome to the soul. Hanging on when it seems like the story only keeps getting worse grinds the heart into a thousand pieces, and one is left to question if God is good when what He gives seems so ugly. So hurtful. 

But here... into this endless sea of doubts and fears and uncertainties comes three words that feel like a lifeline has been thrown to me as I keep treading water in this unknown expanse... 

"I've got you!" 

Friend is reminding me, as I've poured out my soul and shared all the recent broken and talked about how I'm trying to move slowly toward healing in the places long ignored, that we've got this together and that obedience never goes unrewarded and even the hard things often turn out for the best things and that I'm never not prayed for. Never alone. 

Is this what it means to be, as C. S. Lewis called it "little Christs?" Image-bearers of God Himself being His hands and feet where they are needed most? Could this be on a human level what "I will never leave you nor forsake you" looks like? 

What comes to us from the hand of God may feel disappointing and what is allowed may seem disillusioning but you can always count on the truth that God Himself will never disappoint. 

I've needed to hear this, and I'm trying to soak up his words deep into my brain... renew the mind and be transformed. Recovery is hard and life is hard and all this hard can break one right in two if you let it. But the breaking can also be the way through - the way to seeing, to believing, to discovering, to hoping. And hasn't it always been my struggle to keep surrendering to the plan and trusting that The Way is always making a way? 

Affirm. 

Confirm. 

Stand firm. 

This is how you survive... lean-in to the promises and the character of God that have always been and the ways He affirms His love, circle back to all the times He came through that confirmed you are always upheld and there is never an impossible way because He is everything possible, stand firm in the truths you know and the salvation you've been assured of and believe that He's got you tight, no matter how high the waves rise or the storm blows. You will come through. 

Emmanuel. God with us. Through it all. All the time. In every way. 

Lungs breathe a bit easier and I feel eyes water as I know what he's said has come straight to my soul from God's heart, urging me forward and upward and it's like arms coming underneath me to carry me as the knees buckle from trudging ahead for so long. 

"I've got you!" 

I know he does, and I know He does and isn't this all it takes to revive a heart and help it hold on?