Surely the details and context are different, yet this poetic work known as one of the greatest works of literature and divine inspiration, might give me just something to nibble on and sustain me in my ongoing battle today.
As I start my day, I wonder to myself, “What victories are yet realistically within my reach?”
This morning, as every morning upon waking, there was a prolonged time of internal reflecting along with God. It is as though I’m surveying the entire Battlefield, preparing to step into it once again.
There’s a “who… what… where… when…how and especially ‘why'” aspect to all the moving parts. And, the sum total of it all continues to be so hard to navigate. The only real move is to put my feet on the floor again and take this “One day at a time,” and continue to seek God for His strength, grace, rescue and victory.
My mind wanders over battle strategies coming from well-meaning “troops” from without (which will not work) and battle strategies from within that also may not work. I must continue to navigate and discern how I might fulfill God’s purposes in my life, and see the way before me and keep making the next step, the next step, and the next step, in this fog of War…
One look at my phone with my first glance at Facebook clearly reveals that which is definitively NOT obtainable to me and so I run my hot bath and get my coffee ready, prepared to travel through another day hoping within a situation that “appears to have no hope and no end” (a specific statement made to me in 2003 by a clergy person) how to retain what I increasingly view now as my only real “consolation prize” for my lifetime of ongoing losses…
Yesterday I was in dialogue with someone who used the term “forced widowhood” which I found immediately resonated with me, for a variety of reasons.
Some day hopefully, when I regain a little strength from the immediate battles and glean out a little more writing time, I would like to express how divorce for many Christian women, in essence, can be a type of “forced widowhood.” And to attempt to dissect how very problematic that is, within a Christian context and the response of the over-arching body of Christ which is dependent on a number of things.
In the mean-time, I am focused on my own self-care (almost like Job) in a number of ways others cannot begin to even know the half of, nor to fathom…nor would many others be willing/capable of continuing to move forward were they actually in my situation.
I need to get extremely skilled at starting as many sentences as possible with the words, “I need…”
To get started and to translate this to a context connecting to the 18th book of the bible canon, I’m going to take just one verse and ask you to imagine (and yes, this is reading into this entire discourse and perhaps wrongly…) if Job had begun his increasing diatribe with the words “I need…” rather than…“If only…”
Job
6 Then Job replied:
2 (I need you to understand that…)“If only my anguish could be weighed
and all my misery be placed on the scales!
3 It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas—
no wonder my words have been impetuous.
Thank You For Reading
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