Seek His Face

I’ve walked the last week in complete and unqualified defeat. I’ve lain beneath the waves begging for death. I’ve screamed at God. I’ve bargained with God and I’ve accused God (don’t recommend this one).

I’ve started to realize that unlike the picture seen by those outside the tornado the seasons of grief are more like layers. However, at least where I am, layers are not removed they are added. In each oncoming season there is a heavy layer of the one experienced before. So, now I carry the screaming, agonizing, debilitating pain, the fury, and the guilt. One doesn’t dissolve into the other; they pile one on top of the other. Granted, those seasons fully faced down previously do not carry the burn they did when first encountered but they are still there.

So, back to defeat. I’ve been running so fast in my head these last days that I couldn’t even slow my thoughts long enough to catch one and observe it closely. Something was wrong and I was spinning to find it.

I’ve always hated with vehemence the “religious” response to various difficult questions “Well, there are something’s we just can’t understand.” That’s a cop-out people. In my walk with God He has always… let me say that again ALWAYS answered my questions. Always. I recently wrote in the margin of one of my bible studies “Lord, You don’t owe me any answers but You have never failed to answer me.” No, He doesn’t have to but He DOES! Isn’t that the essence of who He is? He didn’t have to hang on a cross and not call ten thousand angels but He did! He doesn’t have to save us from ourselves, but He does!

My problem the last week was that I was buying into this line. I was buying that I would just have to walk the rest of my days in this cloud of nothing and everything. I don’t.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t expect that God will boom a word for word answer to my questions from the sky (though He certainly could) or that I will read a scripture that says “Damon died because…” More often than not in my walk with my Abba He has answered me in quiet whispers in the depths of my soul. I couldn’t explain the answers to you, but my soul understands.

Today He said to me “Jodie Michelle! Wake up child!!! I have given you the mind of my Son, of the Christ (1 Cor 2:16)! Why child are you listening to the foolishness of this world when I have given you MY wisdom and discernment (1 Cor 3:18-23)?”

“Believe Me!!”

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!”

Your face, LORD, I will seek.

-        Ps 27:8