Lisa Bonnema

Gratitude is one of those emotions that we know we should offer generously and continuously, but I think it is also the hardest one to conjure up when life throws us hard news. Or exhausted toddlers. Or moody teenagers. Or piles of bills.

Finding the energy and wherewithal to offer authentic praise when we are pushed to our limits is not easy or natural. For me, it is a discipline I’ve had to learn over and over again. Although I wish I could organically produce thanksgiving when life gets tough, the reality is that it is a choice. Do I praise God in this storm, or do I choose pity and play the victim? It sounds like a simple decision, but sometimes our hearts and heads just don’t line up. Sometimes our hearts are hurting too much to celebrate anything.

There have been times when I have no more words, no more prayers, no more positive thoughts. Times when I have turned to God, knowing in my head that He deserves my gratitude and yet my soul feels empty, my bones dry. In those moments, as trivial as it sounds, I often use music as a way to express myself.

Now, I am no singer and have zero musical talent. I mean ZERO. But when it’s all too much and I have nothing left, I often turn on some of my go-to worship music and let it fill the gap between my heart and my head, my doubt and my Faith, my earthly troubles and my Father in Heaven. I open my hands and allow the music to crack open my heart and let the praise pour out all on its own.

This practice has become a spiritual discipline for me. It doesn’t replace my prayer time or devotion time, but making time for praise and worship on hard days, as well as within my everyday life, has been transformative. It gives me permission to not have all the answers or the right words but, instead, allows me to simply be present and let the Holy Spirit move within me. It is my offering when I feel like I have nothing left to offer.

I don’t know why music shifts something within us—why it stirs up emotions and tugs at the very threads holding our hearts together. I just think it is one of those unexplainable concepts that is true for all of us. And for that reason alone, I believe it is a gift from God; a gift that invites us into a sacred space where praise permeates the air, where the veil is thinned just a little, giving us yet another way we can approach our Father with a posture of gratitude.

Maybe you have prayed all the prayers and said all the words today. Maybe your head can’t think one more thought. Maybe it’s all too much. It’s okay. He knows. Open your hands, listen to the music, and present your song before the King. I promise you, it is a sweet, sweet sound to His ears.

 

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The Lord is my strength and my shield;

my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.

Therefore, my heart celebrates,

and I give thanks to him with my song.

Psalm 28:7

*Excited to share on DaySpring’s (in)courage blog today:

 

As I watched them play on the driveway, I longed for an ounce of their energy. Five kids were playing chase. Two were playing basketball. It was a beautiful day, and I could hear their laughter from the other side of the window. I should’ve felt joy at the scene before me, but what I really felt was exhausted, depleted. I was running on fumes and clinging to my third cup of coffee.

For years, I operated like this, drinking lots of caffeine but pouring from an empty cup. Somewhere I bought into the narrative that it was my job as a Christian woman, mom, and wife to pour out and then pour out some more. Serve others. Put them first. Sacrifice and sacrifice some more. These are the ways of Jesus.

It took me many years and many tear-soaked conversations with God to finally realize that His command is to love others, but to love them as myself. While I was following the first half of that sentence, I was skipping over the second half. I was forgetting that I had to care for myself well in order to care for others well.

Soul care and nourishment are not good ideas or luxuries. I have learned they are necessary if I am going to live out the ways of Jesus. Love and grace have to come in before they can spill it out.

What’s interesting, though, is that when we think about nourishing our souls, we usually think the answer is consumption. An empty cup needs to be filled, so we consume. We do Bible studies, read devotions, and listen to podcasts and sermons. All of that is good and necessary, of course, but what those years of depletion and exhaustion taught me was that the real reason I was tired was that I was trying to carry too much. My hands were full and holding too tightly to a world I was trying to control. Clenched hands are not a posture of receiving anything, including God’s grace.

So, for me, soul care starts with surrender. This means literally laying my worries at the foot of the cross. Sometimes, I name them one by one. Sometimes I lay them down in a jumbled mess that can’t be put into words. Either way, the process is never as easy as it should be.

 

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I finally melted down the other night.

Well, I think “shut down” is probably more accurate. The reality of remote learning and all of its responsibilities hit me hard, so I walked into my bedroom at 6:56pm, shut the door, and never came out. My people knew to stay away. Thankyouandgoodnight.

For weeks, I have been telling my kids this:

 

Yes, it’s a platitude, but it’s all I could offer as I attempted to parent them and help them weather this storm of uncertainty. (I mean, “This stinks. Will it ever end?” doesn’t quite get you out of bed in the morning, does it? 😉 )

After the other night, though, I felt like a fraud. The danger of platitudes is that they lack nuance and force you to measure yourself and your experiences against a standard that is usually impossible. I mean, no one can stay positive all.the.time.

I think that’s why so many people fall away or never really grab on to faith. “Trust God” seems too simple when life starts getting really, really hard and complicated. But, for me, that’s the beauty of it. Not in a “bury my head in the sand sort of way,” but in a “solid footing, concrete foundation” sort of way. Faith is the lifeline I need when the storm is raging all around me. It’s not that I don’t see the storm. It’s that I know what to hold on to while I wait for it to pass.

I read something in my devotional the other day, and it really spoke to me. In his book, New Morning Mercies, Paul David Tripp writes:

“Real faith never calls you to swindle yourself into thinking that things are better than they are. Biblical faith is shockingly honest and true. “

In other words, true faith in God does not deny reality. Instead, it faces it dead on, knowing all the while that God is present and near and covering it all.

Truth, if it is truth, is honest about everything—the good and the bad. Jesus is possibly our greatest example of this. He called out sin, asked hard questions, and wasted no time getting to the heart of the issue. He didn’t romanticize faith or what it meant to follow Him. There would be a cost, and it would be hard. No easy buttons or get out-of-jail passes. But that doesn’t mean Jesus wasn’t hopeful. It just means He knew God was just as real as the hardships and sin in the world.

As Christians, I think we often feel pressure to deny we are struggling because it might represent a lack of faith. On the other hand, we can also feel the pressure to not be “too positive” because then we seem naïve or fake.

Both expectations pull us away from our actual experience and rob us of the comfort and peace that God can offer us.

We can acknowledge the hard and still fully acknowledge God.

We can be realistic and we can be hopeful.

We can lean into what we actually feel because that true and honest place is exactly where Jesus wants to meet us.

We can hold the tension of worldly struggles and heavenly victories because we are grounded in a Savior who fully experienced both. We don’t have to choose. Both are true.

So, I’ve decided that we are keeping our current mantra, as trite as it may seem. We will be honest about the hard, but we also will be honest about the positive things we see and experience, too. Jesus will be our rock, but we will be flexible because we know the Holy Spirit is always at work and doing a new thing.

This doesn’t make us frauds on bad days or naïve on good days. It makes us honest humans who hold tight to the reality that God is present and covering it all. We will go through this storm with a faith that guides us forward, gives us hope, and gets us out of bed, day after uncertain day.

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“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Isaiah 41:10 

 

 

 

Like the Psalmist David, I believe with my whole heart that the Lord is my shepherd. I pray to Him for safety, guidance, and direction. I go to Him with questions and try my best to listen intently for answers. I know God is sovereign and all-knowing, and I crave wisdom and have a deep desire to live my life according to His ways.

For many years, our relationship was defined in this way—me approaching Him humbly, but always with a reason and an expectation that He would guide and provide according to His will.

All of this is biblical. God tells us to cast our cares on Him (1 Peter 5:7). He tells us to present our requests to him (Philippians 4:6). He was pleased when Solomon asked for wisdom (1 Kings 3:10), and He promises to make our paths straight (Proverbs 3:6). Looking to God for provision and even for answers is not wrong. However, all we need to do is look at the second half of verse 1 of this Psalm 23 to see that perhaps God has already provided all that we need:

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.”

 

In other words, when we are in God’s care, David reminds us that we have everything we need. What if instead of seeking answers, wisdom, and even provision, I decided to seek God and God alone. What would happen if I approached Him simply to spend time with Him, not expecting anything in return?

The next two verses of the Psalm tell us exactly what would happen:

“He makes us lie down in green pastures,

He leads me beside still waters,

he restores my soul.”

 

So often, I think my soul needs answers when really all it needs is time with God. It is against our human nature to approach God without an agenda, but I am learning that I need to carve out time to simply be in God’s presence. As verses 3-6 go on to tell us, His provision is a given, and we can rest in that knowledge. If our love for God is genuine, we need to be sure we are practicing unconditional love with Him.

Psalm 23 teaches us that one way to do this is to spend our prayer time praising and worshipping God for who He is. As David does so eloquently in these six familiar verses, we can use our prayer time to remind ourselves of God’s character so we can trust that He is, in fact, enough. With Him, we can find rest, safety, and comfort to the point where our cup overflows.

Do you find yourself in want? Are you seeking answers and having a hard time hearing God’s voice? Perhaps what your soul is really seeking is time with God.

Go to Him with empty hands. Spend time in His presence. Take the time to dwell in His House, and surely goodness and love will follow you all the days of your life.