Paying the Interest

I feel so exhausted, like a horse who is never allowed to stop and rest. Today I asked the Lord for an answer to all that is worrying me: stressful goings-on in our national politics, stressful disagreements with friends, a long list of people whom I should call (don't ask why that should freak me out, it just does!), how I will get my house clean and prepare to travel out of the country next week, while I lie in bed exhausted almost all day every day until it is time to get ready for work. I rest, but the extreme weariness does not go away. I feel every day as if I were just getting over the flu, and even the smallest chore exhausts me to the point of being almost bedridden, and yet I don't sleep much.

I think it is coming from my heart, my soul. I know more people with cancer and tragedy in their lives than I ever have. Most of them are Christians, and handling it well. I know we are not called to carry everyone's burden's really, but to share them. You can't take away what the Lord has given someone to bear, but you can help. Praying is helping, even though it sometimes seems so futile. I see so much suffering all around. Parts of my family have even been touched, by the heart-wrenching sorts of things that make you just say, "Why?" There's no good reason I can see for someone who did nothing to deserve it to be smitten with some painful, inexplicable illness, or death.

So I pray for miracles for my friends who are gravely ill, I pray for strength for the ones who live in constant and insatiable physical pain, and comfort for the ones who have lost someone, even though it seems to me that there must be no comfort possible, even from God, though He is the God of all comfort. I try to be active in standing up for what I believe the Bible says, in every aspect of everything I am and do, even in the face of a bunch of hate from our culture, who hates God's word because they do not know Him. I weep and plead with the Lord for my friends who are not saved: my friend Emily, who has brain cancer, my old piano teacher in Corpus, who is very, very old and does not seem to know the Lord's salvation yet. I pray strongly for him and his entire family, and it seems like still nothing happens. Then I get discouraged. But there are others, too, who I know and who need to be saved, and I keep on because I do not know what the Lord might be doing. Well, sometimes I actually stop, but I always start up again.

All of these things have fallen heavily on my heart, and at the same time, I have been forced to articulate things I have never articulated before. I suppose this is called growing. But I am so tired from it. Partly, I feel that this town sucks the life out of me (if you hear me say "Dallas sucks," that's what I mean), and partly, I spend some amount of energy hating Dallas (not good for my health, I know), and another large amount loving my life here in my little condo with Steve and our animals, and an even larger amount trying to sort through all that is happening with and to everyone I know and love. I feel that the stress of knowing all these things is draining my energy before I can produce or obtain any more.

So, here I am in bed again today, but I do not rest. My thoughts don't rest, and that's why I think it is taking so many days in bed for me to recover from what looks to other people like a few mildly stressful months, maybe. Even talking exhausts me, which is different from usual. There is something about my voice coming out of my body that just seems too tiring for words! (no pun intended.) So, today as I read the Psalms, I said, "Lord, please tell me!" Of course the Lord knows something I don't. That's the point to a lot of it, but I wanted an answer that would make my thoughts be quiet and rest. My mind is so tired. My heart is so tired. My world is so chaotic and fallen and full of lies.

And I turned to my next Psalm in my order of the day, number 97, and it answered me with: "The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice; let the coastlands" (I love how the caostlands get specifically mentioned--I wonder why though) "be glad!" That's it? Be glad? But it is a relief. My churning thoughts are grinding slowly to a halt for the first time in weeks, because He reigns. I am not in charge of it all. I confess I wanted a more complex explanation, but this seems to have been the one I needed.

Speaking of worrying about politics, my sister sent me a bunch of great quotes from the founding fathers of our country, and I wanted to ram a few of them, not least this one, down a few high-up throats:

"...if we desire peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are ready at all times for War." ~George Washington

But the one that really stuck out to me was this, and think it is straight out of a mind that tried to think Biblical thoughts:

"Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble."
~George Washington

My husband tells me this in various ways over and over. I do not consider all of my spiritual battles as borrowed trouble, or the real trouble that my friends are in as borrowed trouble, but it is borrowing trouble when I worry that the Lord does not have it all under His control, and that perhaps I must take it into mine.