“Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.”
Psalm 107:6 NIV
I had lost my spiritual footing but did not realize it. In an emotional fog and totally confused after the diagnosis of stage IV cancer, I felt disconnected from God.
Although I was sure the answer was to spend more quiet time with God, pray harder and read the Bible more, I could not seem to do these in any deep meaningful way. For eight months I did nothing. For me, a type A personality, I felt like I had given up. I no longer cared about life. I had lost my purpose and focus.
Then I read Soul Keeping by John Ortberg. In it he writes about the “psalms of disorientation.” He explains these are “psalms where the soul is disoriented, God is absent; darkness is winning.” The word “disoriented” jumped off the page. Something shifted inside of me. That’s it, I thought. That’s the word to express what I’ve been facing for the last eight months. Something had been rumbling inside of me, but now, finally, I had a word to describe what I had been experiencing.
What I discovered is sometimes when we lose our footing, pausing, waiting and seeming to do nothing can be the most helpful thing we can do if God leads us to that place. As John Ortberg writes, “We do nothing. We wait. We remember we are not God. We hold on. We ask for help. We do less—we let go of our need to hurry through it.”
For me, finally, one day, only at the edges of my awareness at first, the darkness finally broke and Jesus, the bright Morning Star, appeared once again. In that radiant light, I realized I was no longer the same. Despite my lack of trying to fix my situation, and the effort it took to not totally give up, I understood that I had grown deeper emotionally and spiritually.
Reflection for Gaining More:
There are times when God asks us to do something and there are other times when we must allow God to do the work. Either way we must keep listening and focused on him.
