Struggling With Sovereign Sufficiency

Two weeks out and I’m hoping the anchors will hold. The anchors holding my tendon attached to my shoulder, tethering me to six weeks of living one-handed. Not driving, struggling to put on a shirt, the wife helping to button pants.. Massive tear they said. Small rips are more common. And despite the wonders of how the shoulder works, with the rotator cuff and all it seems God should have built in an easier repair mechanism. Like when bones break. Cast them in plaster of Paris and they grow back. Rotator cuff involves attaching tendon to bone. A slower slipperier process.

When the refrigerator went out this week, I could only help my wife empty it one or two small items at a time. Uph. Life is making it clear that I believe my worth is predicated on how much I’m doing; let me help you with that, let me build that, plant that, carry that. When Jacob wrestled with God, he was doing something at least. It’s the inactive quiet I’m finding difficult.

There are over 700 verses where God tells us to be still. The most well-known perhaps, “Be still and know that I am God.” A friend who found Jesus in her teens told me she’d just come to the end of her rope, “You go through rough things and you realize there’s nowhere else to go."

“Trust Him for His grace, behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.” We know this in our bones, God does His deepest work in those places our strength can’t reach. Difficult to be still though, to rest in Gods’ sovereign sufficiency. A drowning man thrashes about violently.

I’m not finding it easy relaxing at home, putting plans on hold and giving up control. A lazy river ride is relaxing initially; but what if you couldn’t get off?  I went walking, to get out of the house, break the monotony. A woman pulled up next to me and shouted (I’m wearing a sling), “I had that done 2 years ago. Keep at it! It’s worth it!” I’m thankful for surprises, for Uber and my wife’s patience. I’m working on letting go. Getting glimpses of that smiling face as I ‘surrender to divine providence.” My anchor holds within the veil.

 Photo by Art Institute of Chicago on Unsplash

Beauty Saves Me

 I am going to tell you a dark secret. One that’s touched my sister, my daughter and myself. Through us it’s probably touched you too though you may not be aware of it. We have a bent toward depression. By grace we don’t meet the full clinical definition. Often it hovers. Some days it lands. “With a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather, a quiver in my lips as if i might cry, by the force of will my lungs are filled and so I breathe.” I dislike mornings. Daytime motivation comes hard sometimes.

My dad was 5150’d. Late in his life, angry seventy-plus years of it. When he was released, I asked him if he’d thought about God. “No,” he said. “I thought about nothing for the whole time. Nothing.” That darkness, that ‘nothing’ wasn’t ever talked about. Seems he would just disappear. I think it would be easy to spiral, spiral, down. Beauty saves me.

It's why Spotify is a constant stream I drink from. I suspect it’s why I’m an extrovert. I seek your companionship. Call it selfish. It’s your beauty I choose to bask in. Your laughter that brightens the dark. Your shared Instagram memes crack me up. Your insights, crafted-ness and God-given perspective that cause me to gasp in wonder and awe. Silly and authentic. My sober guard comes down and darkness flies afar.  

“I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are your secrets,” wrote Buechner. Authors asking questions of the human condition. The Buechners, the Dillards, the Yanceys and Mannings whose anchor chains and mud hooks keep me moored to hope. “Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it is to be human.”