“Digging”

Honestly, I am confused, shocked amazed at al the people who tell me, “I couldn’t handle it the way you are, How do you do it? It would crush me…”

For one it is not like I have a choice.  This is what I have to go through now.  “The Valley of the shadow of death” Psalm 23:4 NKJV Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

But where I am today, how I have learned to handle my grief has come from what I have gone through in life, and through my own “digging”.  I have lost a brother and a best friend to suicide.  I have lost my 4-year-old son to a tragic drowning at a church picnic.  I have lost my mother who was a saint and was taken home abruptly we assume by heart attack or something similar.  And now I have lost my teenage son.  Though this last loss hurts differently.  It hits harder, there is a difference between losing a 4-year-old and a sixteen-year-old. 

Nate and I worked together. Our farm operation was run mostly by him and my son Liam.  I relied on him for a lot.  I know I will make it through this.  Right now, I just don’t know how.

But as I think about the question, I keep getting asked my mind wanders to Jesus words in the Gospel of Luke chapter 6.

Luke 6:46-49 “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?  As for everyone who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you what they are like.  They are like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built.  But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”

The strength of my faith, my conviction, my resolve is not just a simple, “I believe in God” it is the result of “digging” wrestling, stumbling, falling, learning, asking, crying…. And I’m still digging.  Perhaps the hardest digging is in these “Dark Nights of the Soul”. 

And as I write this, I think perhaps this is just me in simple obedience doing what Jesus has told me to do.  And so even as I hope you are ministered to as you are reading this.  This is for me.  This is my journaling this is my processing my faith in the midst of my pain. 

I think it is because if I don’t, I will be lost, my destruction will be complete.  And as I thought this morning, how important it is to stay active in my faith.  James 2:17 For faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. 

Because in the midst of my pain my heart yearns, longs, begs for comfort.  And if I do not actively seek comfort in God, my human nature will seek comfort, in things that do not build up, that do not satisfy, or perhaps even things that are destructive. Without God grief can lead to addictions, to more brokenness. 

So I will continue to “dig”.

And I hope you too will dig down through the things that don’t last, that don’t heal. That don’t satisfy.  Through all the shifting sand until you find the rock you can build you house upon.  The Rock of Jesus Christ Himself.    

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