Struggling Well With Life

Why do we, no let me own this, Why do I choose something so unfulfilling to fill me rather than God? I know better. Yesterday, I felt the weight of the world all around me. And I know that that is the time to go to Jesus, to do what we had just sung about in church - to trust Him, to allow Him to be all we - all I need. But I just couldn’t go there, I just wouldn’t go there. So I went other places to escape the weight of the world - I went to an entire plate of cookies my wife had made for a party. I ate until my head and stomach hurt. Pitiful! Though this is no excuse, Terri makes the best dag gum sugar cookies in the world, and evidently irresistible. You would think a man my age, a man who knows better - on so many levels, would choose Jesus over numbing the pressures of my life with a plate of cookies. No. I chose to find life in an addiction yesterday, and not in Jesus. Proud - I am not, forgiven - I am.

You can take the boy out of Jersey, but you can’t take the Jersey out of the boy. It has been almost a week since Terri and I had a night out on the town and the tunes of good ole Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons keep playing over and over in my head. Terri gave me “Jersey Boys” tickets for Christmas, and finally - I got enjoy my present. I have a southern wife - born in Marion, NC, two southern girls born right here in Charlotte, and I have been paying taxes here for two decades. I am even wearing sear-sucker pants with light suede bucks these days - that’s pretty southern. But last Thursday night I was all JERSEY. Smack dab in the middle of the south, and for those two hours of the performance - proud to be a Jersey boy. No worries - I already have my tickets for the south’s golden child - JT in June. “Gone to Carolina in my mind”.

Been reading through the Bible, and though all Scripture is God breathed and useful . . . I have been weighed down in Jeremiah. The man spoke truth for decades, obediently - and it did not have the effect on God’s people that he had to have longed for! Then, this past weekend, I finished Jeremiah, and headed into Lamentations. Another upbeat book. Most of us have familiar truths we hang on, speak, and even pray - and here in Lamentations I was taken back to a time when one of these key truths of Scripture landed in my theology and planted itself firmly in my world. 3:22-23 “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Decades ago, I was done in, literally at the end of my rope, and in the most lonely isolated place in my life God broke through and revealed this simple yet life changing truth to me - His compassions are new every morning. He rescued me then, and has rescued me every morning since.

I absolutely love working in the yard. I had a massive truck of mulch delivered last week and was in hog heaven out there with a pitchfork and a wheel barrel. Only one thing interrupted a perfect day of escape, and that was disappointment. An unmet expectation, turned to disappointment, turned to hurt, turned to an unraveling within me. I spiraled for hours, praying internally, asking the Spirit for counseling and discernment, but could not wedge myself out of a funk that had taken over. I seldom have my cell phone outside - sort of defeats the purpose, but I heard the tone, and though I was annoyed that someone would have the audacity to invade my sanctuary of brooding, I answered. It was someone very dear to me, who had picked up on my heart, and simply spoke truth to me. “Don’t let your hurt turn to anger”. They caught me just in time. I love how God works.