Ponderings

“Why?”

That’s all I could write in my journal Sunday. I was flying from school home for Thanksgiving, drowsy from a late-night room rearrangement with two of my roommates, frustrated with emotions that had ceased to well up within me. This semester has been one of the most blessed times in my life, and so any serious conflicts with that joy seem to be more exacerbated than normal.

“Why?”

Back to a feeling I know to intimately, a return to a place that I have averted for the past few months. God’s plan had become murky again, while for a moment of life I had thought I had seen a glimpse of it, however dimly.

Sometimes, “why?” is the only thing to say. Sometimes “why?” is all that is available to say. Many times, I think the Lord is waiting on me to ask, “why?” so that He can reveal His glory to me— the awe of His presence that I so often overlook in search of my own happiness. I spoke with a wise friend about the “why?” situation, and she shared something that made my heart jump at the prospect: God can use the why situations to grow us in ways we couldn’t grow otherwise. Woah, watch out, “grow”, I know, what everyone wants to do (sarcastic “psh” echoed). Maybe it was how precious this friend is, she can talk about spoiled milk and I’d beg to drink it— but it was more than her enthusiasm. I have asked the Lord to mold me into a woman of character in my prayers for quite a while now, and perhaps this is the first throw on the wheel. Paul writes the the Corinthians about distress, and while it was written to their worries about him in jail, I still gleaned some applicability to my measly, collegiate life:

Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets.

And now, isn’t it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You’re more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible.

2 Corinthians 7:10 (The Message)

That’s all I’ve got at this point. Hopefully he won’t stop there with me.