Mornings

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Her eyes opened to the sensation of light seeping in through the window blind. She slowly adjusted her position in bed. “What time is it?” 8:04. She moaned softly as the expected feeling of restfulness never came. Instead, tiredness washed over her aching body. Everything in her wanted to roll back over, throw the blanket over her head, and procrastinate the day’s issues just a bit longer. But that wasn’t really an option today.

She hadn’t slept super well. She finally drifted off to sleep sometime after midnight; then she just kept waking up. She saw 1:30 all the way to 2:00, 6:00, 6:30, and now 8:04. She quit. Attempting to sleep was finished for the night. Yet, somehow she still didn’t feel rested; but when did she ever?

It was in these quiet moments of the morning when her mind most wandered through the impending stresses of the day. Her thoughts mounted a “To-Do” list nigh-on a mile long. Chores, scheduling stuff, phone calls, appointments, all those weighty decisions that need to be made… The sun had barely peeped through the night sky while burdens began piling on her shoulders.

...And then there was yesterday. Apparently it wasn’t enough to have all of today’s issues looming over her already, that now we needed to add yesterday’s unsolved woes, too? Every single problem of previous came rushing back like a flood. “Well, I didn’t get that done.” “That was never fully resolved.” “Oh yeah, that hurt and made me cry.” “Yep. That worry never went away.” And on and on and on. This was all much too much for 8am… She needed coffee.

Y’all, this was literally my morning. Every bit of it. I’m sure all y’all have experienced similar such train-wrecks of thought at some point.

How do you handle it? How do you handle that feeling of never quite being up to par and having so much weighing on you?

For some pulling the covers up over their head is a literal, yet temporary, solution for them.

For some it might look differently.

For me, it looks like pasting on an “I’m okay” face and pressing onward with a large cup of coffee. (often more than one)

For who-knows-what-reason we have this ‘thing’ in our culture that we always have to keep face and present well. We always need to be put together and crisp. It doesn’t matter what turmoil our personal lives are going through, we can’t muddy those lines.

Why? What’s the point?

Y’all, our lives aren’t a lawn competition. We aren’t being graded on how put-together we appear from the outside. We’re imperfect humans muddling our way through an imperfect world. The very core of our nature desires the very sin that would be our doom, but for God and His grace. How can we expect ourselves to never show weakness or flaws? That’s just setting ourselves up for failure right there; and fail we do.

This morning, after pulling my weary frame out of bed and draining a couple cups of coffee, the Lord reminded me of something. He gave encouragement to Paul in the book of 2 Corinthians over some of the struggles that Paul had run to Him about. Those words are very much applicable still for us. The Lord says- “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’” (12:9) and Paul goes on to elaborate with “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (12:9-10)

“Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses…” Boast, y’all. Boast!

That doesn’t seem to imply to me that Paul is planning on masking his shortcomings or presenting a insincere representation of himself. Why? “So that the power of Christ may rest on me.” That honesty and vulnerability allows room for Christ to work in our situations. Where humility is void, pride overfills. Yet if we humble ourselves before Him, “His grace is sufficient.”

The author of Lamentations reminds us in his prayer “Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in Him’” (3:19-24)

Even in the rememberings of past hardships, “the wormwood and the gall”, the Lord remains faithful. He will not allow us to be overtaken by old shames and shortcomings for “His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning”. How great is it to be in communion with the Creator God, Him who has an ever-abundant supply of grace and an infinite amount of mercy? It’s amazing!

Like, y’all, do you understand what this means?? This means that those morning thoughts attempting to overwhelm us have no power! This means that the late-night recollection of our numerous shortcomings can’t strangle us within their grasp! This means that our ever-growing mass of failures and weaknesses cannot be tallied against us for our doom. God’s grace and God’s mercy is just; made possible to us through Christ’s dying on the cross in our place. Justice was done to Him on our behalf.

Do we live like it? Do we walk daily like we have the gift of sufficient grace and infinite mercy? Do our lives prove the truth of our redemption? Do we boast of our weaknesses to glorify the God of this universe that has the power to sanctify us through them?

Hardly.

I know I don’t. Not nearly as often as I should or as confidently as I should.

Walking in God’s grace and mercy is a prayer point of mine now. I long to personify the freedom that Christ died to give me.

What about you?