Hello lovely humans! This is my first Q/A post, and while I couldn’t answer every question you submitted, I did enjoy spending some time thoughtfully answering some. Stick through to the end for a small health update + one question I have for all of you!
What do you do when you find it’s hard to trust or see the Lord?
I’ll be frank—this is where I am living most days right now. Feeling awful every day has dried up my sense of delight in God. And…I refuse to be distraught about my lack of delight.
I’ve told several close friends that I feel “emptied out” in this season. My calendar has been emptied of everything except medical appointments. I spend my days trying to rest and heal, which often doesn’t look like much. It’s felt like a long detox from finding any of my worth in what I can do.
The other day I read in Richard Rohr’s Preparing for Christmas that the “‘joy that the world cannot give’ (John 14:27) always comes as a gift to those who wait for it, expect it and make room for it inside themselves.” (p. 4)
There is so much possibility in looking at our pain from a different perspective.
I have felt so emptied out in this season, but I am choosing to see this emptiness as expansion. I am making room inside myself for joy.
So, what do I do? I don’t fret about how hard it is to trust or see God in this season.
I am letting myself befriend the emptiness in my heart. I am trusting that somehow this season is doing what God has always done in the dark—growing new life.
And what does this look like practically? Not rushing to fill every empty space emotionally. Letting a small handful of people sit in the empty spaces with me. Letting less be more—putting a few songs on repeat that I can still sing as prayers, reading shorter amounts of spiritual books and Scripture, being comforted when I can and not worried when I can’t.
In some seasons, we are more surrounded by darkness than delight. Sometimes we sense more trauma than trust. What if we refused to demand that our lives be a perpetual Spring? What if we let Winter be Winter? What if we are being invited to a deeper kind of trust: that the soul is as seasonal as soil and new life really does need the darkness of cold, long nights?
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