Placing the Counted

I can usually tell when I'm getting a migraine.  Some of them come quickly, but usually mine are slow in advancing.  A morning of sleepy daze slowly wakes up to an ache in my neck and behind my eyes by afternoon, and evening brings worsening aversion to light and sound.  A smell may also bring a migraine faster.  By an early bedtime my eyes hide from the lit lamps and I flee (very slowly and stiffly) to my bedroom in a vain attempt to shut out the world.

It was on such a night not long ago that I mused silently about the hypersensitivity of a migraine.  Curious, how lifelike it is.

Bitterness works the same way, doesn't it?  The same way, in fact, as gratitude.  They both count moments.  As I lay in bed that night I heard clearly each whisper, cough, sneeze, cleared throat, creaking door, kitten's thump.  I could list each grievance with poetic accuracy while holding my dully throbbing temples in an attempt to still the pulsing annoyance, to no avail.  Life was whirling dizzily around me as I lay in the dark, but all I could feel was the nausea of light and sound.  My moments of grace escaping without thanks~because my eyes couldn't see them?  No.  Because my soul refused them.  

It's not just food that you refuse when you're in pain~it's the every moment.  The treasure is no less valuable when I refuse to give thanks for it.  When, in fact, I prefer refusing it altogether.  The complaints can be counted as minutely as blessings, and always more naturally, because my heart is always deceptive.  The Old Sin in me hides my eyes as effectively as a headache.  I shield myself from grace, because who can handle its blinding light with such a throbbing behind their eyes?  

Then here is Jesus to gently open my eyes and take the disappointed bitterness from me.  Isn't that the beauty from ashes redemption of a broken world, that He promised so long ago?  Always new mercies, even when I refuse to open my eyes.

Oh, to have numbered my complaints that night with my blessings.  To have given thanks in all things and grasped the every moment grace with both hands, freely taking and giving of the blessing surrounding me, for such is Christ.  To let go of the acrid soul and reach for the better things. 

718. brother fighting sickness hard

719. closeness of bedrooms

720. sound of yawns across hallways

721. show tunes whispered nearby

722. dog asleep noisily at foot of bed

I can usually tell when I'm growing bitter.  Sometimes it comes quickly, but usually it is slow in advancing.  I guess the difference comes in where I put my counted moments.

The Sometimes Hardness

What do you say to the sometimes biting hardness of God's always love?  Blessings are given, blessings are taken, blessings are withheld, and it is all Grace.  Every moment.

How do I comfort with the trite and the condescending when all my heart wants to do is break?  How do I tell friends about stately sovereignty when all they feel is the lack of their darling child?  How do I speak of abundance when I watch years roll by within a few short days?

I don't know.  I do not speak well in the first place.  I stumble over the pronouncing of my vast ideas.  I write my love out of the fear of being unloved.  Yet oftener, words must be spoken to be heard and I can't hide behind the covers of my journal forever.  Loving must be verbal even if I do not know what to say.

II Corinthians 1 speaks of a God who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we might be able to comfort those in any affliction with the comfort with which He Himself also comforts us.  As we share abundantly in Christ's suffering, so we share abundantly in His comfort.  Abundantly.

The word haunts me.  Always abundance.  We share this abundance of suffering, of comfort, of Christ.  Our cup overflows.  Goodness and mercy follow us all of our lives, not as passive onlookers but as interested habits clinging to our paths with the diligence of God-sent dignitaries.  Grace is not disinterested.  

I know these things.  I write them out to myself.  I hang them on my walls.  Chesterton and Donne speak to me out of illustrated passages, hung where I am reminded of their truths.  And yet I cannot speak them.  My mind sails upon thought and swirls new ideas into its current but the words will not be right and I am afraid to speak lest I hurt where I most wished to heal.

Oh for the grace to speak what must be said, and to show the love that I feel.  

Blessings are given, blessings are taken, blessings are withheld, and it is all Grace.

And forever and forever,

   As long as the river flows,

As long as the heart has passions,

   As long as life has woes;   

The moon and its broken reflection

   And its shadows shall appear,

As the symbol of love in heaven,

   And its wavering image here.

~Longfellow, from The Bridge