He is in control

I am currently reading In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day by Mark Batterson (at, unfortunately, an incredibly slow pace because I've been so busy). Now, our youth pastor plus the youth pastor at the retreat I went to this past winter both taught from this book and highly recommended it; in fact, the youth pastor gave it to me for free. In addition, last week, a passage that I had just read from the book was shown on the screen during the church service! It's been so weird to see how often things from this book pop up, and I can't help but exclaim how cool it is. So today I wanted to share something I found in the book that I dog-eared to come back to later because of how much I liked it and how much it meant to me during a recent time when I was overwhelmed with trying to process through what I wanted and how I was feeling.

Research has shown sighing to be a way of processing grief, a response to distress, a way of venting any sort of emotion when there's no way to verbalize it.

Ted Loder's Guerillas of Grace:

How shall I pray?
Are tears prayers, Lord?
Are screams prayers,
or groans
or sighs
or curses?
Can trembling hands be lifted to you,
or clenched fists
or the cold sweat that trickles down my back
or the cramps that knot my stomach?
Will you accept my prayers, Lord,
my real prayers
rooted in the muck and mud and rock of my life,
and not just the pretty, cut-flower, gracefully arranged
boquet of words?
Will you accept me, Lord,
as I really am,
messed up mixture of glory and grime?

Part of me wishes that I had read this book sooner and had found that poem in the book sooner. Because guess what? The Lord DOES accept you for who you are, no more and no less. He accepts me for who I am. He accepts everyone where they are. He knows us from the inside out; we don't even have to verbalize what we're saying. He knows what all of our sighs mean. He knows each and every one of our unvocalized thoughts. And He loves us not because of what we've ever done (or haven't done), but for who He is. It's a reminder that I need constantly, the fact that I can trust Him with my entire life because He wants the absolute best for me because He loves me.

"Nothing is more difficult than praising God when nothing seems to be going right. But one of the purest forms of worship is praising God even when you don't feel like it, because it proves that your worship isn't circumstantial" (67).

So why am I writing all of this, then? Where is it stemming from? Well, remember how I said, reader, that a short while back I had been overwhelmed with things and trying to process it all and make sense of what I wanted and what I felt was best? It was during that period of time that I made a very hard decision that pretty much brought me to tears. I saw God at work in the situation, and it was just so hard to let go and let Him take over; simply allowing Him to do so was one of the hardest things. I know He knew how difficult it was for me and how I disliked it. But I came before Him and worshipped Him and let Him know that I needed Him more than anything to bring me through, that He always is everything I need and nothing less.

Incredibly, God blesses those who obey Him. Let's just say that one day, I was struggling to hand a situation over to God, and the next day God is granting me a completely unforseen blessing. I know for a fact that He has blessed me; there is no other way to explain it. Because of this, I know that there's no way I could ever take this for granted. I thank Him every day and pray that His will, not mine, be done, no matter how difficult it all may be. If anything, what has happened these past weeks has taught me that God truly is in control! He really works in the most unbelievable ways!