Since I’ve been home I’ve have babysat alot for friends and families, which means I’ve heard alot of crying. I’m even living with good friends who have a little one year old and she cries or screams out often. When you work with babies or have them of your own, you learn that you have to let them cry it out. When children are very young they have to learn to self soothe, comfort or calm themselves down. So parents or caregiver have to learn to be ok with the crying and not go to the child. Its hard. You hear them crying and getting so upset that they cough or even gag, but you know its for their own good to learn to cope.
As I was trying to take a nap, I heard the cries of my lil roommate and thought “I long to comfort her. Make her feel better. Help her get to sleep.” Parents want that for their children.
God feels the same way about us. He hears our cries and it makes him sick and sad to hear them. He wants to comfort us and hold us and tell us its going to be ok.
But sometimes he has to let us cry it out.
Let us yell, scream, cry, and maybe even gag until we can calm ourselves down and see that He never left us, He’s been there the whole time whispering ” shhh It’s ok. You are going to be ok.”
I had a moment like this in my third month on the race. I was living in Nicaragua, in a beauty palor with no air conditioning, few fans, blazing heat, with a family who only spoke Spanish. I can speak only conversational. Our team was trying to find new organizations to partner with and had not had much luck. I was hot, homesick, and frankly scared of what God had in store for this year and for my life. One Sunday morning I decided to stay home from church and read my bible and listen to a podcast in English. I broke down and laid on the dirty floor and cried and cried. I told him what I was scared of and what I wanted and what I thought I needed. I cried hard, the ugly cry. Then it was like I felt someone rubbing my back saying “shhhh I’m here. Its ok. Its going to be ok.” It felt like my mom was there. But I knew in my spirit God was there, rubbing my back, comforting me.
Throughout the bible there is this cyclical relationship with God and his people.
We love and praise God –> we get distracted by other gods or the world–>
something bad happens –> we cry out and repent –> we love and praise God
and repeat the above.
The Israelites did this for thousands of years and we have hundreds of pages of the Bible showing us that God never leaves us. He loves us because we are his people. We are made in his image. He even sent his only son, part of himself, to come and save us from ourselves.
We are flawed, we sin, we hurt, and dont understand this world.
But none of that matters because God is perfect, sinless, and is the knower of all things.
He is our Comforter, Redeemer, Savior, King of Kings, Lover of my soul and all I need to do is rest in that. Calm and comfort myself in the Truth that he is with me and always will be for me.
Even when I feel like he doesn’t hear my cries, after a good deep breath, I remember that he is Immanuel, “God with us.”
Blessings,
Jennie
