Sometimes there are words all wound around inside and woven in my soul and wallowed into a well of wondering.
Wondering about the hows and the whys and the what ifs. And they’re all sort of stuck together but splayed all across the page, too.
Picture a white sheet of printer paper with words placed here and there and in this direction and that, scratched across its surface.
In no good order and on one hand they threaten to spill over and out and off and in another way I can’t get them out for the life of me.
I feel, in some senses, as if my shield of faith is starting to need a shield of its own. My arm is heavy and my shield has been hit and hit and hit again and I’m really just TIRED OF IT. I’m tired of fighting and dodging those darts that the enemy hurls and heaves. Why can’t he get tired?
I sit down and begin to watch a video and suddenly there is a word to convey and cover what I’ve felt and been fighting against. Somehow it helps to name it. I’d felt muddled enough that I’d not even tried to dig deep and see what my soul said.
FRUSTRATION.
The very word. It completely caught what I’d felt.
Sometimes situations are summed up quite neatly with one word.
I was just frustrated. Frustrated with people. Frustrated with circumstances. Frustrated with pain. Frustrated with myself. Frustrated with frustration. Frustrated that there seemed no easy fixes available and frustrated with more questions than answers. Frustrated with the roadblocks the devil kept building.
Frustration seems to kick-box me in a deeper and more debilitating way than discouragement does. I can dig into my arsenal of weapons and pull out hope to battle against discouragement. Frustration, though, strangles hope. Frustration grabs me and settles in and taunts with wounding words. “You can’t overcome. You are a failure. Look how long you’ve tried. You are getting NOWHERE. You WILL NOT get anywhere.”
Frustration pulls me slowly down in the quicksand of powerlessness. Bit by bit. Slowly, but surely, sucking the life from me.
Am I going to let frustration win? Not on my life. It may try to leave me powerless, but I am not powerless. There is an arm that is mighty to save. There is an eye that never sleeps.
There is POWER in the blood of Jesus. The blood that stained that cross deep and dark and crimson. It is power. It is life.
Job asks this question in chapter 6 “What strength do I have, that I should still hope?
What prospects, that I should be patient?”
Frustration may strangle hope. But frustration causes a fire to start down in my soul and it starts building and building and fire has power and it is building in me and I am being renewed day by day and I AM READY TO FIGHT BACK.
The Holy Spirit is an all-consuming fire and it lives in me.
God reveals and God heals. God works in so many ways and through His word and through so many people and things.
In chapter 36 of Job, one of my Bible versions bears this title, Elihu Proclaims God’s Goodness. Verse 7 of this chapter says,
He {God} does not take his eyes off the righteous;
he enthrones them with kings
and exalts them forever.
Frustration wrapped its relentless fingers around hope, strangling, squeezing, suffocating.
It came close.
But not close enough.
The Holy Spirit breathes the balm of healing and puffs breath back into hope.
Hope revives, renews, returns.
Hope blossoms. Hope blooms.
And Psalm 9, a Psalm of David, it says these words in verse 18,
But God will never forget the needy;
the hope of the afflicted will never perish.
“An arm that is mighty to save.” YES! “POWER in the blood.” YES! AMEN! Thanks for sharing and staring frustration in the face.