GOODNESS

 

Life has been beating me up lately.

My boss wants more from me at work.

My patients want more from me during visits.

My Mom wants more from me at home.

My husband...I don't know what he wants, just that whatever I am, it's not right.

And I want more from myself.

I am tired. I am stressed. I hurt. The muscles in my neck and shoulders knot like twisted steel cables. Too much of the time, I am sad. And always, I am not enough...never enough.

* * * * *

A card came for me in the mail last week.

"Sometimes it's easy to forget just how much GOODNESS there is all around us."

I wept as I read the note inside, penned in neat handwriting: "I thank God that he sent you to be my husband's nurse as I was facing some of the most difficult days of my life...I am forever grateful for all that you did..."

A clamor of voices, texts, sighs, phone calls, thoughts, and emails tells me every single day that I am not enough, even as I stumble in the traces.

Last week, one voice simply said, "Thank you."

That one voice, filled with so much goodness and kindness, is enough to propel me into another week.

Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body. Proverbs 16:24, ESV

SILENCE

I found myself in 1 Kings 19 this morning in my current read-through-the-Bible. In chapter 18, Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal in a sensational showdown at Mount Carmel. But now, one chapter later, Elijah is exhausted, discouraged, and running for his life. Finally, we come to a beautiful moment when the Lord himself comes to Elijah, seeking Elijah out in the cave where he hid.

A mighty wind tore the mountains apart. But God was not in the wind.

An earthquake shook the mountain. But God was not in the earthquake.

A roaring fire swept across the mountain. But God was not in the fire.

And then...

A low whisper.

Elijah knew, in the stillness of that whisper, that God was present.

My ESV has a footnote to 1 Kings 19:12 that says "low whisper" can also be translated as "thin silence."

Thin silence.

That speaks powerfully to me.

My life has too little silence.

The workday starts early and runs late, often without even a pause for lunch.

Home again and exhausted at the end of the day, my conversation-starved mom pounces on me like a spider on a fly the second I walk in the door.

Dinner, clean up, prep for tomorrow, and the tense, frenetic workday cycle begins again.

Weekends: laundry, cooking, errands, catch up on bookkeeping, change the bed linens, check off as many chores on the needs-to-done list as possible. Another too-busy day, and another.

And if there is silence in this house, it is a bludgeoning silence, a smothering silence, heavy with emotional weight. It is silence that destroys mountains like wind and earthquake and fire.

It is late afternoon. I should review the enormous admissions binder sent home with me from work ("to read in your spare time"), or start yet another load of laundry, or load the dishwasher, or sit and listen to my mom, or prepare for tomorrow's Sunday school class, or clean out my car, or do some other of the thousand things still undone.

Instead, I am sitting on the porch swing. (Best gift ever, Katherine. 💓)

For a moment, just a moment, the air stands still. The clouds overhead pause their riotous dance. The leaves on the trees stop rustling. The birds hold their breath.

A thin silence...

And then rain.

SO MUCH PRESSURE

It's been a rough week.

Let me rephrase that...it's been a rough year.

Heck, it's been a rough decade.

But back to this past week...

Long work days, oppressive heat, way-too-many miles on the road. Coming home after 9 or 10 hours, emotionally and physically drained, wanting nothing more than a bowl of Ramen noodles, a glass of cheap wine, and an early bedtime... 

But greeted instead at the end of the day with yet another set of demands and expectations, never enough and never good enough, the quiet, unseen, unappreciated homefront "second shift."

So much pressure, like Luisa in Encanto. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQwVKr8rCYw)

This week was rough.

It was also very, very good.

Not infrequently, I am blessed to be able to pray with and for my patients. This week, one of my patients asked if he could pray for me. And he did.

Another patient asked if I could be scheduled to see him every day, "because the days that you come, I always have a good day."

And today, I played with Baby Sam, worked alongside Martha, and ate lunch with Justin. And today, Jesus loves me just as I am.

In the midst of much that was "bitter" this week, I'll choose to savor the "sweet."