Healing Waters

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I had kind of a disturbing dream the other night about my grandpa. Ethan suggested I have a soul tie with him, I guess just from being so close to him since I was small. Realized I hadn’t surrendered anything near the complete depth of my loss to God. My thoughts haven’t been “God, You’re good no matter what.” They’re,“God..You’re killing me.”

There’s a song I discovered recently called “Hurricane” by Jimmy Needham. It’s about how sometimes we need God to come crash through our lives and break down our walls and pride so that we can be fully His and fully surrendered. I feel like it’s been hurricane season in my life, and I can see the work God’s done in me, essentially taking down my walls before man which were ever so present before. With a lot of people, I think especially me, it takes a violent hurricane to do that. But..I haven’t been fully surrendered in all of it. I’m thankful Ethan made me see I need to surrender my grandpa to God instead of trying to hold on to him by mourning. I also can’t try to share or take away my mom’s burden; that’s God’s job. I can only help her by being victorious myself over the grief. Though it’s difficult not to get sad when I realize he’s gone, I have the choice to actively refuse the enemy’s medicine of sorrow by continually thanking God for my grandpa’s life and salvation.

Yesterday God allowed me to talk through it with two different sisters who had gone through a loss themselves fairly recently. I think maybe they were both hesitant to talk to me til now because of doubt in their own dealings with God about it all, but it was comforting to hear their struggles and to share mine, and to see how similar they were..the avoiding God, the doubting about our loved ones’ salvation, the dreams, the ease and difficulty of opening up with family.. But no matter where we are now, it still says something about God’s mercy when we would still be able to say, “Lord, you’re good" after coming out of the grind.

I think for every believer, no matter how “well” we’re dealing with the trials, God is the One sustaining us and telling us to come to Him, and I realize just because of that we have comfort to give to those who are going through the same familiar hurricanes. And so “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God” –2 Cor 1:3-4.

I’m thankful also because before all this one of the few things I had never experienced and couldn’t truly empathize with was a loss or breakup (my best friend’s simultaneous struggle made us realize they’re similar experiences), but now I’ll be able to empathize with people much more deeply. The ability to sympathize with the whole range of human struggles is what made Jesus so beautiful, and is something to embrace forreal.

Mmm..healing : )

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