When you've been treading water...

The clean laundry is still in the basket. Still sitting in the hall. Still unfolded. Has been for a week now.

Dinner was bacon and a cookie because, really, who wants to cook for one? And a grocery run is long overdue.

The refrigerator has needed a good scrub down for a month now and there are some olives in the back that expired a year ago.

The list of to-do's never gets shorter and it's overwhelming. This daily life is wearing.

And it's hard.

Hard to watch that husband of mine, kiss our sleeping baby girl goodbye, and leave long before the sun rises.

It's hard to watch him stumble back home 48 hours later, not having eaten or slept in that same amount of time, all the while performing lifesaving operations on the brain, spinal cord, and nervous systems of countless patients who need him.

Hard to watch him fall asleep on the floor while playing with our daughter, knowing that she has only seen him for 15 minutes in the past three days. Hard to know that he'll wake up long before he's rested and do it all again tomorrow.

It's hard dealing with the teething baby who has decided that she now only needs one nap during the day. Hard to feel rested at all when she's up crying each night from the reflux that hurts her little belly.

Hard to look at the stack of bills that need to be paid-- harder to look at the dwindling bank account balance with which to pay them.

Hard to handle the loved one's illness, the spiritual attack on the family member, the friend's broken relationship.

Hard to keep all the commitments, the appointments, the deadlines.

Hard to balance the spiritual, the physical, the relational. The everyday.

It's. Just. Hard.

And each day can feel like such a struggle to stay afloat, to keep the head above water.

The weight of the stress of this world can bear down, until you feel like it would be so much easier to sink to the bottom and let the waters consume. And those waves keep pounding and pounding, wearing you down, and sapping your strength until you can tread no more.

But I am learning that place of helplessness where the soul cries, "I can't do it anymore," is a place of peace.

When utter exhaustion takes hold and my own strength has failed, that is when I find peace.

I have fought the waves and tread hard against the waters, never realizing that the waves are rising to praise, not to destroy.

The seas have lifted up, LORD,

the seas have lifted up their voice;

the seas have lifted up their pounding waves.

Mightier than the thunder of the great waters,

mightier than the breakers of the sea--

the LORD on high is mighty.

Psalm 93:3-4

When I hush my hurried heart, I can clearly see that the daily stress, the life stuff, is all worship. And the waves I fought so hard against are not meant to wear me down, but to press me further into Him.

It is in those times, where my flesh cries to tread--to keep myself afloat in my own strength--that I must relax into the ebb and flow of the waters.

I must rest in the knowledge that my Father, Whose Voice controls the waters, is lifted up in me finding the glorious in the daily trials and praise in the stress.

 

I have learned to kiss the wave that slams me into the Rock of Ages.

-Charles Spurgeon