which excel all we ever knew of you.
On the day I called, you answered;
you increased the strength of my soul.
Psalm 138 [137]
. . .
When I was pregnant with Anna, and we knew that something was not right, people would often ask me how I was doing. I had good days and bad days; I said that the bad days were the days I was worried that I wouldn't be up to the task of parenting in any case, and the good days were the days that I thought that whatever happened, I would be given the strength to see it through. I noted then that it was not that the good days were those when I believed that everything would somehow, perhaps miraculously, work out. The good days were hopeful in a far deeper sense, when I hoped in God's power to strengthen me for whatever might come.
Looking back on that time, I ought to thank God for his faithfulness and love: I made it. And I made it through some pretty unpleasant times with a sometimes unsteady soul. I know that God can strengthen my still unsteady soul, and can draw it back from the brink of destruction. I know what it is like to have fresh hope breathed into my despairing heart, and to see the love of God in the eyes of my children. Today isn't one of those days. Today is more like the unsteady days, the days of uncertainty and exhaustion, of calling out to God, hoping for a speedy answer.
Perhaps more than anything else, the dark and difficult days have taught me how to call out--as much an exhortation to my soul as a prayer, maybe, but I think God hears the prayer in these words:
Why are you downcast, O my soul,
and why so disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for again I shall praise him,
my help and my God.
And so I shall.
Deo gratias.
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