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How Long, Lord?

             How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?  Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall.  

 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me. (Psalm 13)

You’ve been here.  You are here. The world and your own universe are out of control. You want to run in circles, pulling out whatever feathers/hair you have left and cry, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” Nobody loves you, everybody hates you.  You’re gonna go eat worms. It’s the scene in the old, old movies in which a woman (it’s almost always a woman) goes into over the top hysterics and some guy (usually a guy) slaps her across the face to knock some sense into her. Only… you don’t happen to have a guy around with enough stupidity or guts to slap your face and you know from experience that slapping your own face really doesn’t have the effect.

I love that David accuses God and calls on Him to act, not because I think God deserves to be accused, but because God didn’t strike David with lightning for accusing Him. God lets David vent and when David is done venting, he can get his mind back on track.

I recently heard that if you allow yourself to feel the feelings usually dissipate. I’m not suggesting we ruminate or keep rehearsing the feelings, but more along the lines of identifying and naming the feeling, acknowledging that it’s there – not as a friend or enemy, but like a chair – it’s likely to calm. If we take our feelings to God, He’ll survive our hissy fit and then we can get back to reality. It’s when we feed our feelings and turn our backs on God that things spiral out of control.

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