A hard place -

I had one of those days.

You know what I'm talking about ... where everything you do just turns around and becomes something you don't like to do ... it looks awful, can't do anything right, nothing touches you, lost in the dark, can't shake a feeling ... stuck - where you can't let go of just bein' ... well, sad.

One of those.

My heart ached ... my eyes stung ... I altered between wanting not to feel and wanting to feel anything other than ... sad. It wasn't working. By lunchtime I stared out the kitchen window at the drying up grass, the shimmering heat and the hot breeze and felt akin to them all. And I had one of THOSE conversations with God.

Me:"I don't know what to do anymore, I really just don't." ... silence ... Me: "You know how much I want this...I'd give so much for it..." ... little voice thinking inside me: "Maybe it's not yours to give." Me: "That's....I know that, but can't you take some of me for a little sacrifice for it?" ... little voice: "Yours is not the sacrifice...it's already been paid." ... Me: "Then why? That's not fair then! Because if it's been paid, why can't it change?" ... Not fair? Not FAIR? .... Me: "Oh. Because it's not mine ... because You paid for it ... because it's Yours ... because You know why. Oh. Then You can have it...because I'm through trying to see why I can't have it...You can have it. Thy will be done, not mine. I'm sorry." .

It wasn't mine to give or take, or mine to question, or try to fix. Try as I might, I can't even come close to understanding it. It's God's anyway ... it was foolish of me to want to have it now, before He turns it around for all His glory, and for all of our good. It wasn't mine to take, to have, because it wasn't me that paid for it on Calvary. It was He.

The Hard Place - a place I don't like. When I can't cry tears because my heart won't let it go, and my spirit won't acknowledge that anything is worse than usual. Because I don't really have a reason, other than being sad.

And yet ... the hardest place ... Calvary ... has been overcome, the grave robs us no longer of joy, my debts are paid, my life is freed, I am God's own child, redeemed out of love.

My hardest places ... only come ... when I can't and won't give it all to the One who planned it all so, out of love. For me.

"How often, when trials like sea billows roll,
Have I hidden in Thee, O Thou Rock of my soul!!!"
~ Jean Marie

"Oh, safe to the Rock that is higher than I...."

"O safe to the Rock that is higher than I,
My soul in its conflicts and sorrows would fly;
So sinful, so weary, Thine, Thine, would I be;
Thou blest “Rock of Ages,” I’m hiding in Thee. 

Refrain

Hiding in Thee, hiding in Thee,
Thou blest “Rock of Ages,”
I’m hiding in Thee. 

In the calm of the noontide, in sorrow’s lone hour,
In times when temptation casts o’er me its power;
In the tempests of life, on its wide, heaving sea,
Thou blest “Rock of Ages,” I’m hiding in Thee. 

Refrain

How oft in the conflict, when pressed by the foe,
I have fled to my refuge and breathed out my woe;
How often, when trials like sea billows roll,
Have I hidden in Thee, O Thou Rock of my soul."
(William O. Cushing, 1876)