"Oh well." My mantra. I have even thought it would be a good epithet for my gravestone, I say it so much. It encompasses a deep resignation to the despair of abandonment and rejection, a hopelessness I have carried lifelong. You know how they say the process of healing from psychic wounds is like peeling away the layers of the onion? Well, I think "oh well" may be at the core of my onion (or close to the core, I hope!).
God has been shining his spotlight on this attitude for a while, and I have been wrestling with it. I am starting to realize that "oh well" is not just the cynical, hopeless, or even despairing giving up in the face of unrelenting, seemingly interminable pain. "Oh well" is repeating all the lies I have learned by heart and buried deep down: I am a stupid, disappointing failure, no one cares about me, there is no one to help. "Oh well" is unbelief really. It is also disobedience. "Oh well" is a spit in the Face of God. And "oh well" is actually – whoa I'm just realizing this! - quite cowardly.
But God has the sweetest ways of meeting us where we are, of answering our needs and healing our brokenness.
A few weeks ago, we were on vacation and doing what we always do on vacation – looking for rocks – and I saw this really cool shattered rock. Wow, I thought, that would make a good photo for a blog sometime. (If I had been listening, I probably would have heard God chuckling).
Anyway, I had left my phone a little way away on a blanket so I looked around, thinking (I don't know what I was thinking) that amid miles of sand and rocks I would be able to find this one rock again. Instead of putting a marker in the sand, I noted a piece of driftwood nearby and sight-lined it up with the blanket I was heading for and a couple of other landmarks and went and got my phone. And immediately lost the rock.
I looked all over that beach, and then my husband started looking too. I think we covered an acre of sand. I started feeling the familiar defeat pressing down on me. I know that losing a rock on a beach seems like a trivial matter and should not cause deep, black depression and hopelessness. But lies are like magnifying glasses. They make small rocks look like huge mountains. I heard myself say, "Oh well."
And then I stopped and made a decision. OK Lord, I am not going to go that way anymore. I am not going to keep repeating the same lies. I'm not going to say, oh well. I am not going to give in to resignation and despair and hopelessness. I am going to believe that you do care about me, and that you are working for good even though I may not be able to see it. I am going to let go, trusting in you. If you want me to find the rock, I will. If not, I won't. But I will not give in to despair.
I felt myself stepping over a line in the sand (literally), passing through a narrow gate, surrendering up my little hand into his big and trustworthy one. I gave up, not in a negative way, but rather by letting go and handing it over to a loving Father who is faithful to all his promises, who is powerful and mighty to save, yet cares even about rocks - and blogs.
I looked a little longer without success, then we packed up and started back to the car. And there it was, just ten feet or so away. I walked right up to it. I knew it was the same rock – there was the piece of driftwood. But somehow it looked a lot smaller than I remembered.
Only then did I get the irony. All of this had been over a shattered rock somehow still held together.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:17
So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10
For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you … I myself will help you," declares the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah 41:13-14
You will thresh the mountains and crush them, and reduce the hills to chaff. Isaiah 41:15
"And so it is with us: through the fissures of our broken journeys, with pieces of our own hearts shattered on the ground, we journey by God's grace into the New Creation. God sees beyond our shattered remains. He picks them up and sings a song over us." -- Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith
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