Lament.

I just don't really know what to feel right now.

After having my nice little recovery plan ripped away from me, I'm sitting in a hospital room with an infected ankle and large list of unanswered questions.

Plans that I was sure of for the summer, I don't know if they're possible anymore, but I don't know if they're not yet either.

I was already wondering how I was going to get all of my work done for the last 3 weeks of the semester...spending a week in the hospital should add just a touch of stress to that whole ordeal.

And God, I just don't know what I'm supposed to be feeling right now.

The bad news hits, and I'm really upset...it sucks.  I'm not going home tonight...or tomorrow night...or the next night, and possibly the next either.  Everything I planned is changing, and it sucks.

But even then, I'm not exactly sure I want to really bring that before you. (Maybe I just don't know how.)

So, I begin to do what I've honestly done throughout a lot of the last few months.  I focus so much on the fact that you are good, that you work all things for good, that you outshine any darkness that exists in all of life...but see, I never really allowed myself to really go through the darkness to come to that conclusion.  I hold on to that in the most surface-level way I can muster.

I'd much rather see you as a god who isn't really involved in this situation...as just being kind of distant.  I can keep you over there, keep telling myself that you're good, that everything's gonna be okay, and convincing other people that I'm doing fine because you're just that good.  (That sounds good from someone going into ministry, right?)  I'd rather think that you had absolutely nothing to do with my circumstances, that they just happened because the world is a nasty place full of evil and bad guys, but that you still love me, and you want me to be happy, to bring me out of this.  See, that's much easier for me to handle.  It's easier for me to look at you and smile when I think that you have nothing to do with my pain and frustration, but you just want to make things all happy and good for me again.

But see, you're not a distant god in the corner.  You're ever present.  There isn't a thing that happens that isn't something you willed.  We don't control you.  The world doesn't control you.  Nothing controls you.  You are wild and free to do exactly as you will.  You are right here, in the midst of all of this.  You're not in the corner just trying to make me feel better.

I'd rather blame the world for my problems and focus on Romans 8, which says how you work all things for the good of those who love him, and not on anything else.  That way, I can say that evil is messing things up, and that you are just doing everything you can to take a mess and make it a masterpiece.  (That even sound pretty good right?  Pretty Christian.)

But see, you're not just the God of one part of scripture.  I can't read one part and dismiss all the others.  I can't cling to the fact that you work all things for good, but just ignore "this is the day that the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it!"  Or the words from a daily devotional, "Be careful not to complain about anything, even the weather, since I am the Author of your circumstances. The best way to handle unwanted situations is to thank me for them. This act of faith frees you from resentment and frees Me to work My ways into the situation, so that good emerges it." You are the same God that works all things for good, while also being the author of my circumstances, asking that I thank you for them.

No, see, that's much harder.  God, if I let you really be who you actually are, I have a whole lot more things to answer to.  If I let you be who I want you to be, with just the pieces of scripture that make me feel happy and content, I can continue to say super inspiring things like "God is good!" while going through crappy circumstances.  But if I let you be who you actually are in my life, there is a whole heck of a lot that I just don't understand.

If you are the author of my circumstances, why did you write up these circumstances?  They suck.  I'm in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV, with an ankle that you would think is a fan of Detroit's hockey team by its color, with no food in my stomach as I await surgery that I have not a clue about the recovery time for, all while I've been trying to plan my summer, organize and write very large papers (within 2 weeks!), and just learn how to walk again.

You are the author of these circumstances?

Really?

You made this day, and you want me to rejoice and be glad in it?

You want me to thank you for the unwanted situations on my life?

How can you really want that?  How can you desire me to do that, when I'm feeling like you're drawing away from me in my circumstances?

God, do not turn a deaf ear to me!  I am in anguish over what is happening right now, and the last thing I want to do is turn to thanksgiving!  I don't know how to do that right now!  God, please do not draw away from me!  Draw close to me, I need you right now!

It would be so much easier to let you be off in a corner passively making my boo-boo's okay in situations you don't have any control over...but that's not who you are.  But God, if you are going to be who you are, I need you to be all of who you are for me right now.  I need you to hear my prayer, to listen to my cry for you, to respond and act in my life!

God, I do want to believe that you indeed work all things for the good of those who love you.  But the only way that I can keep you as my God instead of my god in the corner is to really allow those words to be absolutely crazy right now, and yet to hold onto them with a faith that just doesn't make any sense at all.

I do want to believe that you are the God in the business of the redemption and healing of your creation. Yet if you are my God instead of the other god, I just can't see that right now...and honestly, maybe I shouldn't.

Maybe if I'm putting on a happy face, only focusing on the good and cheerful parts and saying nice Christian things, I'm not being realistic. I'm not actually acknowledging the fact that I'm suffering in this world, when you are a God that is actually in control of all things, even the author of circumstances. I can't reconcile that by myself...I need you to do that for me, because I just can't.

God, I began this semester with a prayer that you would teach me how to lament.  (boy, that was dumb.) And you answered that prayer.  I can't thank you right now for answering that prayer.  Not yet.  I can't thank you for these circumstances, and for what they're doing in my life.  Not yet.  I can't thank you for letting me have a broken ankle, and then letting an infection begin right when recovery started getting better.  Not yet.

God, that's my full honesty there.  I just can't do it yet.  But you are God, and you are good, and worthy of all praise.  I love you.  God, will you have mercy on my lack of faith?  Will you slowly work on my heart, taking this stony heart that just can't thank you right now and transform it?  Only you can do that.

Transform my heart, O God, that the songs that I sing in church about surrender and embracing your cross can truly become the songs of my heart.

Surgery in 22 minutes.  See you there.

Amen.