Embracing the Pain

Yes, winter is passing. And Spring is coming.
Somehow that doesn't create the great excitement that it might have at some point.
However, I am longing for a thaw on every level and today the above zero temperatures and melting snow were a truly welcome sight.

My emotions have been unpredictable and I am learning to cope with this new season of life.

The season where the kids are growing up and away and I wonder just what happens next.
I have lost my passion for life for the most part and I feel like I am grieving the changing of life seasons.
Watching my parents aging and wishing I could set them both back 10 years so they could be more comfortable and active.

And then I wouldn't feel so responsible and sad.

Yet the Lord gave me a picture the other night - I don't know if it was in a dream or not.
I think we were just talking, as we have lots of time to do that when I am awoken by muscle spasms and then lay awake for extended periods thinking and overthinking and praying.

Anyways - in the picture he stood with his arms extended to me. Out of his chest, (I think it was his heart), there extended a long thorn. It was an invitation to embrace Him and it wasn't an awful thing. I believe I entered the embrace, by choice.


At church there has been talk about "embracing the pain" and I don't always know what that looks like, but this was such a good explanatory picture for me. Pain is not an easy thing to embrace, we naturally want to avoid it. But somehow, embracing Christ, even though it meant piercing my own heart with the thorn that came from him seemed right. And what better place to
embrace pain than inside of Christ.

So, as much as I am able, I will enter the embrace.
I will try not so much to just simply endure or moan, but enter into something with Him.

My painful afflicted eyes, my increasingly crazy muscle spasms, my paralysis, my unknown future.
I lean into Jesus, lean into suffering and draw my life from Him.
Trusting for joy and passion to come again.
And until they do, I will simply trust.

"Though the fig tree does not blossom and there are no grapes on the vines...
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord." Habakkuk 3:17

Spring is surely coming.