Pursue.

I so wish I could just sit and write posts about my favorite recipes or stay-at-home-wife-ing 101 tips but with surrendering my writing and words comes God’s incessant pricking to be real. No matter how often and how apprehensively I do it.

Here you will not always find a merry, “my life is going flawless and fabulous” read, but as long God keeps asking for it, I offer my real and raw transparency.

. . .

I’ve been catching myself asking “why” way too much lately. It started with those unanswered prayers I mentioned last week. And when I wrote that post, I promise I was learning, living and believing it. Then a few inconveniences later, the gumption to learn and grow ran away and the big life “whys” intensified.

Thanks to the nagging why and its ability to sway my attitude, I didn’t want to do my devos today. Or yesterday. Or the few days before that… I didn’t want my growing frustrations to be met with familiar verses and comfortable Christianeze concepts. I wanted them answered and fixed and I just plainly didn’t feel like trying.

I spent more time sending texts in hopes to find sympathetic words instead of putting that effort into prayer. I turned to time filling 80’s sitcoms instead of daring to open my bible because I didn’t want to close it without getting a written on the wall in front of me promise.

I aimlessly fumbled through a handful of these miserable days, but while washing the dishes and planning to avoid my quiet time yet again today, God sweetly spoke to my selfish, stubborn soul.

I waved a dishwater dripping fist around and begged once more “WHY?…” and with all gentleness in the face of my faithlessness, God answered with, “because I am good.”

It was the simplest thought that powerfully weaved into my core. With this thought making its way around my reflections, God walked me through moments of my past where I waved the same fist at Him.

I remembered moments where I so ached with hope for different outcomes but on this side of them I can’t even imagine had God granted my wants instead of what He did end up filling those spaces with.

With those instances fresh in my mind, I was puzzled at what makes me think that this time will be any different?

This fight we’re facing right now is, sure, more pressing than a scared 12 year old pleading not to leave my only home and move provinces, or relationships I begged for and was (Praise Him) denied. But regardless of how long, how hard and how much more real it may be right now, God is good and He chose this way for us just like He chose every other way we’ve already travelled in our story.

This humbling washing dishes encounter directed me to climb onto the couch and dive into my bible, ready for the familiar verses that seemed suddenly more inviting. Instead of a familiar verse though, God highlighted just a portion of a sentence in Judges to keep me afloat for the following days.

Hidden in between the major victories that Gideon and his men experienced, of destroying the Midianites to capturing and killing their kings who fled, there is a tiny verse tucked in chapter 8, verse 4.

 “And Gideon came to the Jordan and crossed over, he and the 300 men who were with him, exhausted yet pursuing.”

Exhausted yet pursuing.

These men had just finished a victorious, God given battle, and just ahead them was yet another triumph. It was in the middle though that they were worn out and tired, and wanting to stop, but they kept pursuing.

This portion of a verse jumped off the page as God reminded me that He acknowledges the very real days of emotional exhaustion but in spite of them, we are to keep pursuing; to keep moving forward. And somewhere on the other side is a God-given victory in the works.

God is good. No matter the “why” or the sometimes gut honest “how could you”, God is good.

He’s always been good.

He’s always going to be good.

His character hasn’t changed from now in your current situation and every other “why” you’ve already graciously passed. Just as we can be thankful and worship on this side of finished seasons, so we can be thankful that the current one will also come to a close with results that come from a perfectly good Father. We can praise Him on this side of heartache because He is worth treasuring over every fleeting feeling. 

Believe me, I truly know it is soooo much easier said than done but that doesn’t lessen its impact or worth. And if I can only say the words, I still need to keep telling these truths to my rebellious emotional habits and trust that God will bring about the rest.

Though you feel exhausted, keep pursuing because God is good.

"Taste and see (discover by experience) that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him." Psalm 34:8