Hard-pressed on every side

I’ve been on this journey I did not choose for a while now, and I kind of thought that things were looking up. But then the bottom fell out this week. In the same week I lost a close friend and mentor and had an SVT episode that would have been dangerous had I been alone or driving. 

I wrote about my friend the other day, but that wasn’t enough and no amount of words ever will be. She was a bright light to all who knew her. Without her light, the world feels darker. She was one of my main prayer partners throughout these hard years. She truly loved the Lord and loved her people well, which sums up what we are called to do. I have to get an ablation soon and I had banked on that phone call we would have the night before the procedure. She was a nurse too and she would have reminded me of all the things my nurse brain will anxiously forget the night before. 

I know I will see her again, but that doesn’t help right now. The other morning I was turning over the common questions of how this could possibly have happened and why God didn’t heal her. Did I not pray enough? What about all of the good she had planned to faithfully love others for years to come? As I was spiraling into these unanswerable questions I got a word picture that stopped me. 

At the bottom of a pit, it is impossible to see where you are, why you are there, or what the big picture looks like. I was trying to find aerial view conclusions while only seeing 3 feet in front of me. At that moment I paused all of my questioning and decided that for right now, my job is to grieve and there is no sense to be made out of any of this.

I thought I was so close to being out of this long valley but for some reason, this season down here is going to be longer still. The difference between now and the start of this journey is that I used to think I had to get myself together and find a way out of the pit for God’s hand to be on my life again. But now I know that God is with me in the pit. I read this passage today and it is a reminder that we were never promised easy mountain-top lives, but we are promised His presence. 

6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.

-2 Corinthians 4:6-10

I do feel hard-pressed like things just keep falling apart no matter what I do or how hard I work. But I know that even while I’m pressed on every side, God’s all-surpassing power keeps me from being crushed. God is with me here and I know that if Jesus was sitting next to me, He would weep for my friend too.