In my last post (My Dusky Hour of the Soul), I discussed some passages from Tim Farrington’s A Hell of Mercy.
I’d like to share another here, a passage that really resonated with me in this time of wondering and waiting…
What the dark night shows us, through the intensely resisted revelation of our spiritual bankruptcy, is that we have been in the game for the payoff… We’ve been hoping for peace of mind during our golden years, a solid foundation of spiritual capital, security, and a 9 percent return on bliss. But now the bottom has fallen out of the market. Our spiritual checks are bouncing. (p. 71)
Oh, how I relate!! I posted earlier (Bargaining with God (Who, Me?)) how aware I was of this very phenomenon in my life.
But, now, I am even more conscious of the fact I’ve been “in the game for the payoff.”
I recall during my sophomore year of college, I suffered an emotional breakdown of sorts and entered the campus infirmary (I had an infection and fever as well). The infirmary staff kept me there until they knew I was on the rebound, both physically and mentally.
Anyway, upon leaving the infirmary, I headed over to the dorm room of one of the spiritual leaders on campus to seek counsel. I will never forget her words upon my sharing the recent struggles:
“God has a wonderful plan for your life” (or something to that effect, though I doubt she quote Law 1 of the 4 Laws to me).
In any case, I believed it. Those words (and the subsequent friendship with this woman) encouraged me more than you can imagine. I needed to know someone had a plan for me. I needed to know someone liked me, too.
It’s only recently that I’ve seen that I am angry at God for not giving me the wonderful life I thought He had planned (I suspect we had different plans in mind all along).
Though I talk a lot about the benefits of suffering (again, in terms of repenting and growing closer to God), at some level, I expected God to deliver on that wonderful plan with something tangible, not just something spiritual (and even that seems to have been lacking lately).
I’m embarrassed to tell you what I now realize I thought that good life entailed, but it did NOT include four years of an unemployed and unhealthy husband, exceedingly (for me) difficult job and church situations, and a loss of the type of community which has made me feel loved most of my Christian life. And it did include some sort of “spiritual payoff.”
I don’t think I saw God as a cosmic Santa Claus or Vending Machine, here to serve me if I inserted the correct spiritual coinage. It was/is more subtle than that.
Rather, I saw Him as my loving Father who intended to take care of His child, to ensure that His child had a good life.
Any of you parents know how self-centered kids can be are… Well, I realize that in a real way, in my relationship with God, I was very much like a child, very egocentric.
It sort of makes me sick.
Maybe it’s time to grow up.
More reflections to come…
My husband recently listened to St. John of the Cross’ 
A wise friend of mine once said that God gives us the exact curriculum we each need for our spiritual growth. To me, these two statements say that God knows exactly the disaster – the life loss – each of us requires in order to find Him in a deeper way; He knows what idols to remove so that we turn from them to Him.
defeat, only through suffering the annihilation of everything we know and think ourselves to be, that we find ourselves capable at last of knowing God’s real mercy. (p. 90).
Who knew I could sleep so much?
hands. Therefore, we seek love in all the wrong places.
d Dr. Bright could not answer the question. He said Dr. Bright just started to cry. He sat there in his big chair behind his big desk and wept.
My husband told me I could stop talking.
who fired me feels totally justified and blames me completely, while he has a job and we are not only without income soon, but have a mess of work on the house before us. Oh, and he did this while my husband and kids were away for Spring Break…
I’ve heard people talk about all the crowns we’ll get in heaven.



during our church’s missionary conference. We needed to be encouraged by hearing his stories of how - through the 
I went upstairs to get my glasses to read the article better (not-so-new eyes…).
Moreover, I may have a block that keeps me from becoming all a woman of God is called to be. It’s easier for me to be a tomboy Christian, I do believe. I’d rather be the initiator than the recipient. Waiting on someone else scares me.
After sharing much of this discussion with my husband, he later volunteered that he wondered if maybe one day we will become poster children for having respectively embraced our masculinity and femininity in Christ and discovered a new intimacy with Jesus and with each other.
Here’s the background to this particular post:
worst pain I had ever felt (you can guess the first, ladies).
The toilet had overflowed and continued to run and run and run…
that she can’t help herself.
I ran to get the video camera.



Fix or Flee.
Isn’t that God’s job?
to do, but because, by your mere desire to know me better, you may uncover something that God can work with: some issue in my life He needs to deal with, some deep-seated puss-filled lie He wants to lance.
NOT by giving advice, but by asking me some questions. Not questions that are advice in disguise (like these: “Are you reading your Bible? Do you thank God for your situation?” no, it never crossed my mind to do so… puhleeze), but questions that arise from your love for me, your desire to know my inner self, and your reliance on God.
or it (although there is merit in not addressing the immediate pain in order to reach deeper issues) or when there’s a crisis which must be addressed immediately (as in telling someone how to get out of an airplane after it ditches in the Hudson).
And one more point, just to show how self-centered I am. Had I been in a different place the other night, the advice I got from one person should have been cause for my rejoicing. My friend was, in fact, simply sharing the advice she had just learned to give herself. Had I been able to take my focus off myself, I might have realized that her advice was evidence of spiritual growth, that she was sharing some incredible lessons that she didn’t g
rasp herself months ago.
(I also got two very encouraging notes via Facebook … you know who you are! Thanks!)
But it’s another thing to remember that He’s also immanent, that He walks alongside of me and suffers as I suffer.

Dear Lord: I felt like a lost and frightened little child last week. You understood my pain. You heard my cries. You sent friends (by Internet and phone) to encourage me. Help me to relax in your care. Help me to love as you love me. Help me to stop thinking about what will remove the pain only, but to think about Your glory. And to know that in all you are bringing into our lives, in all you are not taking out of our lives (including sin), You are making sure your glory and our good are at the top of the agenda. You suffered to make sure that would be the case. Thanks. And, if you wouldn’t mind removing the pain, that would be helpful, too. Amen.
I won’t tell you why. I mean, even an anonymous blog has a limit to how many gory details it’s prudent to share.
I never thought I was the kind of person who would get mad at God when things got tough, who would think she deserved better.
make him give you the things in life you really want. …I knew a woman who had worked for many years in Christian ministry. When chronic illness overtook her middle age, it threw her into despair. Eventually she realized that deep in her heart she had felt that God owed her a better life, after all she had done for him. That assumption made it extremely difficult for her to climb out of her pit, though climb she did. The key to her improvement, however, was to recognize the elder-brother mind-set within.” Tim Keller, pp. 38, 42 in
life is not about ‘doing right’ to ‘get blessed.’ Maybe the Christian life is not about the blessings of life we so badly want and doggedly pursue. Maybe our obedience and faithfulness are to be energized by a very different motive than receiving the good and legitimate blessines we long to experience in this life.” Larry Crabb, pp. 25-26 in
bad theology.
Yep, He owes me.

w we did. Here are the three overarching resolutions I made. I said that “I want to…
And it isn’t over yet. Between my worst ever job situation and my husband’s lack of job (and, yes, all four recent prospects fell through as of yesterday), and various other random stresses, I found myself in a very miserable place.


sly right nor the politically correct in a ballroom.