Living Chronically Blessed

About a month before my mom went into crisis in October I read the book Uninvited by Lisa TerKeurst. She urges the reader to take on a challenge to every day saying the following. “God is good. God is good to me. God is good at being God.” I took on this challenge, morning and night for a month prior to my mom’s first crisis in October.

I didn’t think much of it, until I found myself being pushed out of an ER room after saying goodbye to my mom, possibly for the last time on this side of heaven. I stared at the door for a minute, but they were pushing me to a waiting room, there were papers that needed signatures, the pharmacist needed answers, that I didn’t have, family needed to be updated and a million other things were being pushed at me and around me. But, as the first tear started to roll down my cheek, one thought, one anchor, one lifeline pushed through it all and I stopped in the middle of that hallway with chaos surrounding me and coming at me.

In that moment, I found the only assurance I needed, “He is good. He is good to me. He is good at being God.” For the first time since I took on the challenge, I felt what I was saying. I’d always believed it, but in this moment, in this chaos, I felt it.

In all honesty, I called a friend in the moments following and I was left feeling worse than before I called them… They weren’t what I needed. My brother, my best friend, the one who gets me more than anyone else on this planet came a couple minutes later and even his presence wasn’t enough… He wasn’t what I needed. Somehow, when the doctor came to tell us that mom was still hanging on, I still found no lifeline in her words… Her words weren’t what I needed. It all meant nothing if I didn’t still believe that He is good, He is good to me and He is good at being God.

You can believe in something without feeling it and you can feel something without believing in it. In that moment I believed and felt that my God was and is a good God, who was and is good to me and who was and is good at being God. In the weeks following my feelings would fluctuate, but my belief never wavered. I had moments of feeling hopeless and abandoned, but I always believed in hope and that I was surrounded by my God, never alone. Feelings truly will come and go, but your beliefs can and should anchor you, at least until you are ready to feel it again.

“The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn’t fight fair. But we don’t live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.”

2 Corinthians 10:5-6 (MSG)