Painting: Bearing One Another

Do you ever feel like you are stumbling along, burdened and feeling heavy of heart? I sometimes get there when I have a lot to do and it is not coming together, like this morning before I wrote this article. Some of it had to do with the thoughts I had been thinking this week. You see, recently we watched two drama movies, Wild and the Judge, which left me feeling unsettled and thinking of hard things, difficult lives and painful circumstances.

In Wild, we walk the road of grief and recovery with a young woman on the Pacific Crest Trail, a three month long hike. It is about a mother- daughter relationship. In the Judge, it is a father-son relationship, of broken relationships and hurts so deep but unspoken, of love withheld, of confusion and finally a sort of reconciliation.

I cried during the movies – we walk in a broken world and what the movies portrayed is all too real. Even as followers of Christ, we are not immune to that brokenness in our own lives: unforgiven, not talking about what is wrong, hiding truth, withholding love and affirmation, sickness, death. I feel a heaviness in my heart just to think of it all.

Will I have the grace to forgive others when I am hurt by their actions? When they seem stubborn and unforgiving to me?

It doesn’t take long to find any of the above scenarios in the newspaper or online news. I cannot change the world, but I can change me. And even that is difficult without Christ by my side encouraging me on and giving me the strength to love myself and have compassion on my fellow people. God calls us to forgive and to love, and he promises to walk with us when we are devastated by loss.

But sometimes when my heart is heavy I just need to cry and let the feelings flow. The song I shared last month still fits here. It lets me cry and feel, yet trust my Savior. My attempts at recording the song have not been successful yet, but here are the words again:

I will sing to the Lord, sing though my heart is aching, sing alleluia to my Lord.
With my heart I will sing, sing though my heart is grieving; have mercy on me, O Lord.

I will trust in the Lord, with all my heart, my soul, my mind, I will trust in you.
I will choose to rejoice, regardless of the circumstances I’ll trust in you.

Singing alleluia! Praise the name of Jesus, alleluia, amen.
Singing alleluia! Praise the name of Jesus, alleluia, amen.