Quotes about Struggle

Humans are very attached to outcomes. We say we trust God but behind the scenes we work our fingers to the bone and our emotions into a tangled fray trying to control our outcomes. We praise God when our normal looks like what we thought it would. We question God when it doesn't. And walk away from Him when we have a sinking suspicion that God is the one who set fire to the hope that was holding us together.

The Devil is vicious, but he's not victorious.

My heart struggles to make peace between God's ability to change hard things and His apparent decision not to change them for me.

In the quiet, unexpressed, unwrestled-through disappointments, Satan is handcrafting his most damning weapons against us and those we love. It's his subtle seduction to get us alone with our thoughts so he can slip in whispers that will develop our disappointments into destructive choices.

Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive."1

The biblical way to be preserved is to be pressed. And being pressed can certainly feel like being crushed.

And we'd both agree this isn't how it should be. This life between two gardens is confusing and complicated. Dust is messy. We don't even like to touch dust, especially if it's made up of the shattered pieces of our own hearts.

Why doesn't Jesus work for me?" is never the right question. Instead, when circumstances shift and we feel like we fall short, we should ask, "How can I see Jesus even in this?

We are amazingly similar to the children of Israel. We spend half our lives looking back at our own Egypt with selective memories, longing to have our comfort zone back. Then we spend the other half wishing our days away for a dreamy future in our own promised land.

We all desperately want something that we see the Lord giving to other women. We see Him blessing them in the very areas He's withholding from us. And while these other women may not be obnoxious like Peninnah in their reminders of their blessing and our lack, it's increasingly painful each time we see a reminder. We look at them, and we feel set aside.

We hyper-focus on the lines of Scripture containing the miracles, and we miss the details of the mess.

Lord, have mercy on all that jiggles on me. And my soul. And my obviously whacked-out brain.