today?

today: today sucks.

today i am helping my friend and her boys move from their house into an apartment after a divorce, a painful chapter is closing and a new but unknown future awaits, starting over...so many changes, so much pain....holding her hand tightly. praying for her and those boys unendingly.

today my friend's old friend from home called to tell her that his best friend's wife and baby died this morning during childbirth.

today my mom is visiting her 24 year old young friend from church who is possibly facing a diagnosis for lung cancer in the next few days...

my sweet jessi, the young girl i mentored in college, i learned today is having more problems with brain swelling and abnormal blood work after brain surgery....waiting on tests...and more tests...

today, kenny's cousin, shanna, who has already buried one child, has had life turned upside down once again by delivering her baby girl too early at 32 weeks....so far, both mom and baby are fine..but it is still very early.

days like today make me long for heaven. is that bad? is that a cop out? i just get so overwhelmed at how life can be so stinkin hard for so many, watching so many people have to hurt and suffer all at once like today, like a 20 car pile-up of crap...i know we live in a fallen world....but still, i have days like today where i sincerely feel like the sky is going to fall on top of us all....a day where nothing makes sense and we are told bad news and have to pray like crazy for a child to live or cry when hearing about the loss of a mom and baby for a poor grieving husband or have to stand in the doorway of a familiar house and lock the doors one last time and shut the door on the past...or pray with a friend for God's will in her diagnosis....

days like today should cause us to fall at His feet and pray, unceasingly pray. all this, to bring us closer to Him, to draw us in and depend on Him..it should...i get that. i do. and the amazing, yet ironic, thing about all these stories of events today is that all these people are believers and are trusting that God will deliver them through this. they all are getting by on faith and people praying for them. i can't imagine trying to handle all this news in the first 6 hours of my day today without having my Hope and my faith. i would probably want to go jump off a bridge. seriously. i might.

 but instead, i know my future is sealed with His grace and by His grace and that i have a redeeming beautiful ticket out of this crazy world to a gracious reunion with my Savior who waits for me. if i didn't have that hope, i would want to bail on this damned confusing world so fast on days like this. it would be so easy to give up or get angry and say there is no God. but there is. and He is here, even in the midst of all today's hurting hearts. i am told he grieves with us and hurts too along side of us, far from the notion of him just being a cruel cosmic wizard in the sky who sets up the dominoes of life, sits back and watches them fall like some may think. He is not like that. His spirit is there to carry us. i must remember that he is not in the stands watching but on the sidelines of life right there with us...i must remind myself that truth on days like today when i want to ask, "God, where are you, are you there, are you watching all of this?"

trying days like this have me crying and asking Jesus to just come back and get us and take us home...make us whole again....reunite us to His perfectness and say goodbye to the fallen world, the sin ruined place of rest for now that hurts to live in. yet, in the midst of it all, we are called to hope. but is our hope enough for days like this? does that hope and trust work for days like this where it could go either way according to God's will? for things that don't make sense like a man losing both his wife and his baby in a single second? for a young woman facing a possible death sentence diagnosis? surely we don't just have this Hope to use merely as our assured ticket home or a reservation at the eternal table of God. surely the Holy Spirit can give us hope and his Promises and his Grace to sustain us in days like this, for people who cry out to him and are faithful and Trust him. 

it's just days like this, when the inbox for urgent prayer and bad news and sad things is so full and overflowing that i wonder why, i wrestle with God and want to wring my hands in agony and confusion and pain at Him..i want to make sure He knows what he is doing, i question His plans for so many..

but in the end, the answer is always the same. in my heart and in my mind. our God is sovereign. he is IN control and we are not.

 help me be faithful to trust you, Lord, that you are in control of each of these journey's and will not abandon those who call on you.....