In The Middle By Nina Burnet
Have you ever experienced the strain of being "in the middle"?
In the middle of "not yet," a season of unknowns, or just in the middle of a good ol' personal crisis?
I have.
I watched many of my close friends and family get married and have kids while I struggled in my dating life. I felt fear and ache when someone close to me went missing. I have felt my body struggle under an unknown diagnosis. I sang to my newborn daughter in the middle of the night, not knowing if she could actually hear me trying to comfort her. We have all experienced the undeniably intense strain of being in the middle, stretched like rubber bands, feeling like we are about to fling out of God's hands into the abyss. Or maybe just feeling like we are going to snap altogether.
For years I would pray through these situations, asking God to fix them and asking Him to give me relief and ease the tension, asking Him to rescue me so I could finally relax and be fully present in my life. In one such situation, after visiting the counsellor and feeling the need to process something, I headed to a nearby park to journal. I sat down and was instantly distracted by the tiny daisies that frequent the parks in the greater Vancouver area. I picked a few and rolled onto my back to feel the sun on my face. It was very bright, so I took my ballpoint pen and held it up, and for a moment, it blocked out the sun. A pen blocked out the sun. Of course, it couldn't block the light out, but for a moment, I contemplated how something so tiny could cover up something so huge. And I realized it's all about perspective. Life is so full of troubles, and if I held back living amid a stretching time, I would probably miss most of my life. And I would inevitably miss out on the good God had for me in the midst of it all.
When we find ourselves stretched in the in-between, it is so essential that we redirect our perspective off of the uncertainty and back on to the truth of who God is. If God never changes, then who He was in the midst of past struggles is who He is now and who He will continue to be: loving, faithful, present, kind, good, and so much more. Remembering this can give us the strength to survive the stretch. And choosing to be thankful for who He's been will increase your hope and joy so you can move towards thriving in the midst of it.
If you are new to your walk with Christ and don't have a long shared history with Him to look back on, I encourage you to seek out Godly sisters/mothers/aunts who can lend you their faith through their own experiences. I would also encourage you to look at how God has been faithful to His people since the beginning of time (Joshua 21:45; Psalm 119:90; Hebrews 11; etc). I don't know how you are being stretched today and I don't know what unimaginable pain you may be facing, but I pray that the Holy Spirit would bring just one memory to mind that would strengthen and realign your perspective on Christ. If you can, take a moment to do that right now. Did a memory come to mind? If it did, write it on a piece of paper and tape it somewhere visible in your home.
Now whenever you see it, I encourage you to thank Him for being with you. Praise & meditate on Him (see the song list on the next page if you want some inspiration). Put your trust in Him again and again, and know, if there is a time where you step out of that hard situation, that He will be with you in the next one, and the one after that, until you see Him face to face. Turn your eyes upon Jesus Look full in His wonderful face And the things of Earth Will grow strangely dim In the light of His glory and grace -Helen Lemmel -
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