the power of a comma
"Sing praise to the Lord, you saints of His, And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name. For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning." -Psalm 30:4-5
My sweet mum comes and visits me bi-weekly, and I cherish these few hours spent with her. She is very wise and often brings up new thoughts for me to ponder. For example, the power of the comma.
This past week, while sitting on the couch and sipping raspberry kombucha, we were discussing discouragement and how easy it is to fall into a downward spiral. Sometimes it'll start small, with a little disappointment like not finishing your to-do list, but then the disappointments keep coming with increasing size and speed. Sometimes discouragement piles on until you feel suffocated under a truckload of too much.
Things like being too busy to properly clean your house and feeling overwhelmed with the sheer mess of it all.
Things like friends hanging out together without you or a role change hitting you like a punch in the gut because that should be you and you feel replaced.
Things like losing a loved one, or miscarrying a child that you never got to love the way you had hoped. And yet life moves on as though nothing has changed even though for you, everything has.
Things like feeling invisible, as though your contributions don't make a lick of difference. Or, as Queen put it, feeling as though nothing really matters.
Things like the loss of a job that you were really counting on, and now you're scrambling, at a loss for what to do next or where to turn to for comfort and aid.
Things like a relationship change, where you have been cut off from someone that you love (by the one you love) when all you want to do is hold them and remind them that they are loved.
Things like the general overwhelm of life, when hardships are coming at you and you've forgotten how to rest because there is just too much on your plate right now.
Things like change in your family dynamic as people move away so that you no longer see the people you love as much as you'd like to and no one is home anymore.
This is when the enemy starts to whisper lies in your ear. Lies about who and what you are.
Unseen.
Unheard.
Unloved.
Unloveable.
That this is your fault.
That you somehow deserve this pain and suffering.
And while none of these things are true, these lies can pervade our thinking if we're not careful. We can become so caught up in our current, helpless situation that we experience what psychologists call learned helplessness. According to Medical News Today, "in psychology, learned helplessness is a state that occurs after a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly. They believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they do not try, even when opportunities for change are available."
God is still good, even when your situation is far from good. Courage, dear heart.
So how can we flip the switch on discouragement and remind ourselves of truth when things are feeling so dark? How can we get out of the state of learned helplessness and keep putting one foot in front of the other as we plod along during the darker days? How can we look to Jesus and hold to the truth that He is still good even when our situation is far from good?
Enter the comma.
When we are in a season of pain or hardship, it can be easy to get stuck in it, to believe that this is all there is. In the case of learned helplessness, we begin to despair, believing that this is what life is now. There is no escape, no way out.
This is far from the truth.
Your situation may feel dark and dismal and totally beyond repair, but if God is involved, there is hope.
We tend to end our sentences with periods but God is the master of the comma and semicolon. We specialize in absolutes, but God is not restricted as we are.
We say things like, "this is terrible" or "I'm in over my head" or even "I've cried so many tears I feel like I haven't got any left."
God says things like, "this is terrible, but I am with you." or "You're in over you're head, but you're not alone." or "weeping may endure for this night, but joy comes in the morning."
Despair, grief, and sorrow do not get the last word when God is writing the story.
Where we humans are limited and we come to the end of our rope, God has no such limitations. He's not even on a rope! Despair, grief, and sorrow do not get the last word when God is writing the story. God is a redemptive God and He is on His throne, holding our frail, grief-stricken selves in His hand. He has promised to never leave us nor forsake us, and He will adhere to every promise He has ever made.
When God writes the story, it looks more like
"My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever." (Psalm 73:26).
"... Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy." (John 16:22).
"... Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows, but take heart because I have overcome the world." (John 16:33).
Let God into the mess of your life and hand Him the pen. He will cross out all of the periods, the would-be endings of our lives, and write a new ending, better than anything we ever could have imagined. He will put in commas instead of periods and semi-colons instead of finalizations. This isn't the final draft of how your life will turn out!
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.
Jesus is faithful and He will walk alongside you in your suffering and pain, holding your hand all the while. Jesus is faithful and He will not abandon you to the pain of this earth forever. Jesus is faithful and He has walked through the pain and agony of life on earth so that we could have the hope of a brighter future, if not in this lifetime then certainly in the next.
Let God put a comma in your story. You may be walking a dark and lonely road, but the road is never so dark or so lonely that Jesus won't walk it with you.
Let God erase the period you've been living with, the final sentence you've given up under. Let him write in a comma and finish writing the story for you. You've got no strength left, but God does.
And don't forget that one of the ways God rewrites our stories is through others, faithful friends who will hold our hands in our darkest moments, who will lift us up to God in prayer, and who will bring us sandwiches when we're too tired to even think about cooking.
You're not alone, and this isn't the end.
♪ - listen to See You Again by The Gray Havens.
