No Words

"Aaaaaaaargh!"

Sometimes there are no words for how you are feeling.

On Thursday, I wanted to raise my eyes to the heavens and scream.

I wanted to ask God, "Why?!?!?!? Why did she get cancer??!??! Why couldn't You heal her???!!"

Because it hurts. It hurts again. Another friend has passed away after months of praying. I just want to know why.

God says He cares for the sparrows. But I've found baby sparrows dead, fallen from the nest, too late for me to save them. And it happens again and again.

And this happens again and again. Another friend has lost a daughter. Another friend has lost a wife. In two and half years, I've said good-bye to six friends, three of them to cancer.

And I have no words.

It's hard to praise God at times like this. I admit it. I praise Him through gritted teeth and streaming tears, like an angry child who doesn't understand but won't argue the fact that his parent loves him. 

So I keeping praising Him–for what He knows that I don't know, and what He can see that I can't see.

The finite human mind cannot reach into the recesses into the infinitely transcendent mind of God. But the end of understanding does not mean the end of trust or love or obedience. ~Gregory Floyd

If you are grieving right now, for whatever reason, know that it's okay to tell God how you feel. Or, if you don't have the words, just raise your eyes to the heavens and scream. I'm not going to try to explain grief, or suffering, or God's will, but if you would like to read more, I recommend C.S. Lewis's book "A Grief Observed." If someone you know is grieving, I recommend Nancy Guthrie's book "What Grieving People Wish You Knew about What Really Helps".

God and Dishes

When I was a young teen, I suddenly decided one day to wash the dishes for my mom while she was out (this was in the day before we had a dishwasher). Surprisingly, I had never washed the dishes before. My parents never taught me, or made me.

But this one day, when I saw the dishes piled in the kitchen sink, I thought it would be a nice surprise for my mom. Most likely I was prompted by a recent Sunday school lesson, something about "honoring your parents." So I did my best to wash everything and put it in the drying rack, then I waited for my mom to come home and notice.

It didn't take long for her to spot the clean dishes. 

I waited for her to come and ask me about them, which she did. But when I told her that I had washed them for her, she didn't say "thank you" as I expected her to. She said, "They're still greasy. You didn't do it right."

And I didn't wash dishes for my mom for a long time after that.

This was the memory that suddenly popped into my head as I washed the dishes this morning. I don't know why. But I see a two-fold lesson here:

1) Praise a child for doing right. There are times when quality matters, but what is more important is that the child is choosing to obey, to take initiative, or to make the attempt at something that is difficult. Rather than focusing on how well the child did the job, praise him/her for doing it to the best of his/her ability.

2) Our Father in heaven loves it when we obey Him. We hesitate because we worry about failing, but God asks us to take the first step in obedience, and He promises to guide us the rest of the way. He is the perfect Father, and He never criticizes us for not doing a good-enough job. Rather, He's the Father who asks you to do the dishes, then stands with you at the sink, gets His hands dirty, and cleans three plates for every spoon you clean (and the rest of the kitchen besides!)

Be That Role Model

I stood at the front of the room, eighteen pairs of teenage eyes looking at me. I was teaching a singing class, but I wanted to share something with my singers before we even opened our mouths.

I started telling them about how I started singing in high school, with no previous experience at all, how I learned all I could along the way, dealt with the disappointment of not making the top choir, but going on to college to study music and to keep singing. My hope was to encourage those who didn't feel like they were great singers.

I wish I could say that a student or two came to me after class and said, "Thank you so much for sharing that!" but none did. But I knew that if I had heard someone tell a story like that when I was in high school, I would have felt better about myself (and not have the courage to tell the person so.) That person would have become my role model for sure.

You have a story to tell, and you never know who might need to hear it. YOU can be the role model for someone who simply needs to know that someone has gone through similar experiences. For someone who is still on the journey, you are the one he/she sees further down the road, and it is so encouraging and so helpful for all of us to know that we are not traveling alone. 

So share your story; be that role model for someone.