Life is scary

I've been whining for a day or two now about feeling sick. I don't particularly appreciate that side of me. This morning I woke up feeling terrible and called Max just so I could whine all over him. I promptly went back to bed. After waking up for real a second time, I was going through my email and blogs and other assorted online reading. Still feeling a bit sorry for myself. I think I might have even growled at the dog a little bit.

God has interesting ways of bringing me up short. This morning it was in the form of Beth Moore's blog. She spoke at the funeral yesterday of a friend and as I read, I became more and more emotional. I won't give you the whole story here, I want you to read it here!

At the end of her post, she wrote something, though, that took me over the edge. As she and her daughter, Melissa, sat in a doctor's office perusing cancer booklets (no she doesn't have cancer - it was a precautionary visit), Melissa's response to the overwhelming power of cancer and death was, "He knows it's scary to be us."

He knows it's scary to be us.

He knows it's scary to be us.

We get so caught up in our lives and in the pain and struggles that we seem to face regularly. We forget to relax and trust that God cares so much for us ... individually. We push Him away so that we can handle our pain by ourselves and then we think that is where God spends His time ... far from us and far from our pain.

I remember participating in a state piano contest when I was in high school. I was absolutely terrified. Terrified! I had been practicing and practicing for this day, yet my performance anxiety was destroying my confidence. Mom and I went into the bathroom to pray together before I went on stage. I made it through my performance and when I came back out, she had run from the auditorium to be there for me. I saw, at that moment, that she had been on that stage every moment of my performance. She knew when I skidded over a note, when I hit a chord perfectly, when I shook through a measure, when my face crumpled with the loss of a count. She knew every moment of fear that I was feeling up there because she had listened to me practice every day and had heard me as I talked and gave life to my fears. (I did great ... no worries, my fears were nonsense and she knew that as well.)

If my mom knew how scary it was to be me at that moment, how much moreso does God know how scary it is to be us when we have unspoken fears and terrors that we only dream about in our sleep. She couldn't be on stage with me, putting a comforting hand on my back while I played, but God could. Mom died when I was 28. She can no longer assure me of her knowledge of my fears and encourage me to get through them. But, God can! From before the beginning of my life to long after the end of my life on earth, God will care for me through my fears and terrors.

He knows it's scary to be us.