Tempering the Tantrums

Not every experience I have had in my life is one I have embraced with open arms. In fact, I'd say that through many of them I've looked more like a spoiled child not getting her way and pitching a fit in protest...and the tantrums are so very attractive, too! How comforting it is to find this passage:

"'Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.' An angel from Heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground." 

Luke 22:42-44

Jesus wasn't wild about his impending experience either. He begged and agonized so much he was sweating blood. I have been distraught over things before but never so much that I was sweating blood! And, he was honest with God about not wanting the cup...his anguish was not hidden--it was raw and real and honest...of course he followed this was with a comment I can say, but my heart still needs some work to believe "yet not my will, but yours be done." My heart is still working on learning this lesson despite the words of Psalm 94:22:

"But the Lord has become my fortress and my God, the rock in whom I take refuge."

No matter what He asks me to walk through--good, bad, hard, easy, fun, boring...He is my refuge. Makes me think of the forts we built as kids made out of couch cushions and sheets. We actually believed that this "fortress" offered real protection--what I know as an adult is that the fortress the Lord provides is indestructible. Even when it feels like the enemy has knocked over all my couch cushions and stolen all my strong sheet roofs--God is my fortress and will always be my refuge. But sometimes he has to shake the things I have made my refuge so I come to him instead!

For Easter, our pastor has on his Facebook page a very profound quote from William Penn:

"No Pain, No Palms

No Thorns, no Throne

No Cross, no Crown."

As I sit looking at life, there are times I live in a pity party of one...and there are times I can't understand why I'm not getting what I want. And yet when I do receive what I want, everything comes into focus and makes sense--the waiting, the timing, the rationale. So why doesn't this stick so that next time I know and can go skipping through circumstances anticipating everything to come into focus? Because I am human and God never intended for me to be frolicking everyday into the plans of my life--it's in the times of waiting that I am brought much closer to my Lord and learn more about myself. A friend recently passed along a quote our pastor used in a sermon. The same quote, when googled, brings up countless sermons on waiting and patience: 

Second only to suffering, waiting may be the greatest teacher and trainer 

in godliness, maturity, and genuine spirituality most of us ever encounter.

If we were meant to go frolicking into every circumstance we come across, Christ would not have been pleading in anguish to have his cup be taken away. When he received the answer from the Father, he embraced it and walked into the situation knowing it had to be so, but the part that resonates with me is that my Savior knew the plans the Father had and struggled with accepting them. How often is that me? Laura Story's new song "Blessings" says it better than I ever could....

We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights 
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights 
Are what it takes to know You’re near
And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know the pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home
It's not our home

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
And what if a thousand sleepless nights 
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise

Sometimes there are things we need to learn about or from God that require tears, storms and disappointment...but what I know in my head and try daily to know in my heart is that this world will never satisfy my deepest longing--to live in a world as it was intended to be with my Jesus! I don't wake up saying "bring on the trials Lord" but this knowledge does temper the tantrums a bit!