Never Mind the Hard

Thanksgiving night 2024, I cooked supper for my parents. (If you know me, you know it absolutely was not turkey and dressing…) We ate, played cards, and I left their house thinking, “My throat feels kind of funny. I hope I didn’t just get my parents sick.” Sunday after Thanksgiving, a trip to urgent care revealed it wasn’t strep, flu, or COVID. A doctor’s appointment about a month or so later when the cough was still relentless revealed urgent care should have tested for whooping cough… And, 15 months later, I have asthma and am still coughing every single day of my life. Whenever the cough has at least improved significantly, I’ve come down with the common cold or COVID or a really long word I couldn’t pronounce at the time and don’t remember now or, most recently, the flu. It’s been great…just great…

Other than my sister getting to hear, “I’m sooo tired,” on a daily basis at work and, “I feel like death warmed over,” at least once weekly, I’ve really tried not to whine because I can’t stand to hear other people whine, so I try not to do it. Plus, there are just way worse things. I’m also (Lord, forgive me!) a compulsive “I’m fine” liar. 

But, after being miserably sick pretty much the whole month of December, catching the flu in February resulted in multiple meltdowns. And, the night this week when I was literally crying because I was too tired to put up groceries much less try to squeeze in a couple of hours of working on Sunday School literature (as embarrassing as that is to admit), I had a very honest, unfiltered conversation with God. I informed Him, not that He didn’t already know, that trying to do ministry while working full-time and keeping up with all the demands of life on my own already felt next to impossible before I was sick all the time. Then, I said something to the effect of, “I just really need to know You’re still with me in this…” because it all felt like too much.

On my lunch break the next day, I had a teen lesson from Mark that I had started on my lunch the day before that I just knew could wait because I had to start new adult literature. And, as I started outlining a lesson from Jeremiah 1, I knew why. It wasn’t because I was stressed about being behind and not even having a single lesson started when I really needed to already have at least one and a half written to stay on schedule, although I thought that was what it was. It was God, in His goodness, giving me exactly what I’d told Him I needed.

Jeremiah 1 records Jeremiah’s call. And, God really didn’t deal very gently with Jeremiah. When Jeremiah tried to offer an excuse, God plainly told him not to even go there and that his job was obedience. He was to go where God sent him and say what God told him to say. He commanded Jeremiah not to fear, knowing there would be plenty of temptation for Jeremiah to do so. He warned Jeremiah part of his prophetic role was going to be rooting out, pulling down, destroying, and throwing down. He warned Jeremiah those in power and all the people of the land would fight against him. Still, even as God prepared Jeremiah for a very hard row, toward the middle of the chapter, He told him, “…for I am with thee to deliver thee,” (Jeremiah 1:8), and then, the final verse of the chapter reads, “And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee” (Jeremiah 1:19). God assured Jeremiah he would never be alone.

We are so good at focusing on the hard. In life, in ministry, in you name it, we see obstacles. We see struggles and trials and frustrations. We see all the reasons to fear. We see the fight. And, we just want all of that to go away. We really just want easy. Instead, we should find strength, peace, and even joy in the Lord’s presence with us in the midst of the hard. Instead, we should remember deliverance is certain. We won’t mind the hard nearly as much if our focus is on the one carrying us through it.