The summer of 2016 was the most difficult summer of my life. I had been dealing with chronic pain for 3 years with no relief or end in sight. In conversation and prayer with my husband, we decided it was best for me to resign from my job in order that I focus entirely on my healing. Approximately 30 days after I submitted my letter of resignation, my husband told me he wasn’t sure he wanted a life with me anymore. In the weeks that followed, he filed for divorce.
During that summer, I lost my job, my health insurance, my husband, my home and the full use of my body. I was desperate. I moved in with my parents and told the Lord, “Well, Lord, I’ve got nothing. You are the only thing I have. I need you to be my everything.” Now, I could write endlessly about this time of my life and how the Lord met me, but I’d like to share with you where I FIRST started in my pursuit of survival.
Every day during the summer of 2016, I would spend hours in the Psalms. Why? Because I found that every emotion I was experiencing could be found in the Psalms. Sometimes the words just leapt right off the page…
Psalm 42:5
Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
Psalm 32:3-5
When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my groaning all the daylong.
For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.
Psalm 88:13
But I cry to you for help, Lord; in the morning my prayer comes before you.
It was as if I was writing the Psalm myself. The Psalmist was reading my thoughts. I felt seen, understood and known. I also found hope. I was reminded that if God met the Psalmist in the depth of despair that he experienced, God would surely meet me as well.
Do you need to feel seen, understand and known? Dive into the Psalms this summer. I promise that God will meet you and bring you hope as you find every emotion you can imagine in the Psalms.
~ Elsie