Show Me How Good It Can Get
When it rains, it pours. That is for real. I feel like over the past few months, there has been SO much going on in my world, in the world of the people around me, and the world at large. Sometimes, it feels like it is too much to bear. In my life, I’ve had some ups and downs lately. The journey towards healing continues. It often feels like I take a step forward and then a few steps back. We continue to peel back the layers of the chronic illness onion (or monster) and it keeps revealing new things to us (and by us, I mean me and my doctor).
I’m grateful for new discoveries, new information, and even the things that have come up as setbacks, because it helps peel back those layers. I just didn’t know this onion was so damn large and complex. With some of those more recent discoveries, I have felt defeated, sad, frustrated, confused, etc. And on the other side of those feelings was this sense of relief and hope. New information (even when it’s not great news), is helpful to continue to figure out what is going on.
The lives of some of my close friends have been a lot lately too - lots of pain, challenging situations, relational brokenness, etc. I continue to try to show up as a loving, patient and non-anxious presence in the world for my people. And then, when you look at the world around us, it may cause you to say WTF? or in nicer terms, how can this be? How can it be that there is so much brokenness, hatred, and pain in our world? When you try to hold it all: the stuff of your life, the stuff of the people’s lives around you and then our collective stuff, it can leave you tired, burnt out, and hopeless.
For whatever reason, the prayer that has been on my heart over the last month has been God, show me how good it can get.
This prayer sounds pretty ridiculous after I just spent the three previous paragraphs naming all of the issues in the world. But this prayer has become my little message of hope to myself over and over again. Even in the midst of confusion, chaos, diagnosis after diagnosis, setback, failure, loss, grief, sadness, hatred, I choose to say God, show me how good it can get.
I wouldn’t describe myself as a toxic positivity type of person. I tend to be in reality. But, embodying hope is what is carrying me through these days. To me, embodying hope doesn’t mean passing over the hard stuff, it means holding space for hope as I am simultaneously holding space for pain. The pain is real, y’all. And what I’ve learned is that you cannot truly heal until you name the pain out loud. Give it space, hold it tenderly, express your anger about it, talk to your friends about it, talk to God about it. You can’t really heal until you acknowledge the wound. But it’s a slippery slope - for a lot of us, acknowledging the pain can quickly slip into sadness, hopelessness, and despair. And this is where I catch myself and say, God, show me how good it can get. These are some of the real ways this prayer has manifested lately:
God, I do not understand why my body hurts so much. Show me how good it can get.
God, I am tired of seeing brokenness, pain and hurt in my life and the lives of the people I love. Show me how good it can get.
God, I do not understand why people in this world want to hate on each other so much. It literally breaks my heart. Show me how good it can get.
And I could write 1,000 other prayers like this. The list could go on and on. But what I’ve noticed is that while giving space for the pain and the broken things, I am also simultaneously opening my eyes for hope. I am choosing to see that things could and will get better. Things change, things transform, and things heal. But I need to prepare my eyes to see. I believe that I have a God who will show me how good it can get because I’ve seen it over and over and over again. Just in this last month, I’ve had prayers answered in my own life and prayers that I’ve prayed on behalf of others answered too. I’ve had people show up for me in big, miraculous ways without even asking.
I hope that this prayer can offer you some hope and that you would be bold enough to ask God to help show you how good it can get.
Sending love to you in all of the most tender parts of your story today.
