"Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."
Psalm 73:25-26
David's words have been really relatable lately as I find myself crying a lot.
Friends and loved ones in my life have been going through difficult trials...miscarriages, cancer, struggles in their family life. As the biblical counseling class I've signed up for would say...life is hard. I would like to blame all the crying on the idea that as the years pass, my emotions seem more out of control but the reality is that as the years pass, our world seems more broken than ever. Physical comforts and steady incomes are offset by a realization of how much we fall short of holiness.
While I have been thinking and praying through all these situations whenever I could, last night it broke me. I cried and cried because I realized how truly selfish I had been. Yes, I felt sympathy and perhaps even empathy towards friends' sufferings. I prayed for them and tried to encourage them. But at the end of the day, I realized that my own concerns had still overtaken those things.
The truth is that even with all those things on my mind, I still placed my very petty "burdens" above them all. I had been so focused on my own struggles that I failed to realize that God was asking me if I was really seeking Christ in any of it. I have certain hopes and dreams that I want so badly to come to pass that I've been praying for "God's Will" to be done. But I haven't accepted that if those things aren't in God's will, then surely God not fulfilling those dreams was meant to produce in me a certain sanctification for His glory. Ultimately, I haven't fully learned that even without those hopes and dreams fulfilled, I am not less of a person for them. Rather, I should find countless joy in the fact that my redemption from sin and the promise of eternal life is all the more precious because my worth is not tied to who I am on earth.
And so, I feel like I need to retreat. Step back, breathe and reevaluate my life. I need to wholeheartedly desire a sanctification that would help me to care for those loved ones more genuinely and more faithfully - to try and love as Christ loved (1 John 4:19). I know I need to be less selfish, to be less prideful, and to live for Christ alone. I guess it took a very broken moment to be reminded of all those.
