A Lament of My Own

I understand Israel's wanderings in the wilderness. I understand them wondering what the Fu Man Chu is going on as they walked from one end of the Sinai to the other, going everywhere but getting nowhere. How futile they must have felt, as the wind blew gritty sand into teeth and hair; as the heat scorched bodies furiously and with no remorse; and the sounds of a million animals awaiting their turn as an offering to a capricious, invisible God. I know the desert well, I think.

That old saying, "When life hands you lemons make lemonade" is a load of the heaviest crap you can store in a WalMart bag. I've been dealt lemons. I've made lemonade. The problem is that someone always seems to pee in my pitcher. Yeah, I'm feeling a little sorry for myself right now, because I'm tired. I'm tired of trying. I'm tired of holding on in faith, trying to persevere, or whatever. But here's reality for you: I have no visible direction right now; I am unable to support my family as a salesman; I am missing out on my son growing up because I work 12-hour days; I have nothing to show for those 12-hour days, have lost all hope of being any good at this sales thing, and frankly, I'm pissed because God seems to be on vacation in Tahiti sipping Margaritas on the beach while I flounder around and battle depression.

I feel like I'm stuck in a time warp, caught between my past reality (i.e., ministry) and my future reality (i.e., more ministry), unable to live in the present moment as I mourn the past and my unrealized future. I seem to be on day two of a forty year wandering journey into a very nasty place. And I'm already tired. My feet hurt.

I understand why the Israelites wanted to go back to Egypt: slavery is at least a known quantity, something tangible and measurable, something in the present moment before you; wandering never has a definite sum until you've reached the end of the journey and you can look back and see how it all played out. Wandering is stoically stuck in the future moments ahead of you. You only find out 2+2=4 when you reach the end and someone points out the obvious. In Egypt, 2+2 may have equaled 5, but you at least knew you had an answer.

In the book of Lamentations the writer describes the destruction of Jerusalem.. And he mourns. He mourns the death of his reality. But here is the rub: he finds hope still, clings to it in the midst of his lament. I can't get there. I can't get to hope, or, at least, not in a permanent way. I can't get past the mourning. I want to. I do. But when you watch your love, your passion, your ministry get ripped out from under you by politics and agendas, well, it hurts. Bad. And You don't quickly recover from it.

So that's where I am. I still believe in God. I don't know what to believe, but I believe in something, or rather, in Someone. But I've still got sand in my hair, it isn't getting any cooler out here, and my feet hurt.

shalom, matt