The other day I was in a bit of a melancholy reflective mood and wrote some poetry about finding peace. This morning I would like to expand a little more on what I wrote about the ache of the soul.
In the same way I hide from the ache of my soul. Yet the waves of life continually shows me that which I don’t want to see. Yet slowly, consistently and relentlessly I am buffeted from the winds and the waves which threaten to destroy me. The emotions of fear, anxiety, hopelessness and distrust are the waves of destruction which seek to overwhelm me.
I tossed and turned a lot last night and got up at 2:45am. In times like this, I like to pray and write. And so I blogged about what was on my mind in regards to a college assignment on identity. After I finished writing, I prayed about the ache in my soul and what it was that was causing my tossing about, unable to sleep.
I felt the Lord whisper into my heart the word failure. An indeed there is a deep sense of failure that causes my soul to ache. In many ways I have failed as a man, father, husband, brother, son, employee and employer. I have failed myself, failed society and failed God.
Often we think of sin as being something that is black and white. We think of it within the confines of laws, rules and regulations. If we break a law, rule or regulation we have sinned. While this is true, the darkness of sin rules even deeper. For it is sin that causes us to fail. It’s that unknown force that no matter how hard we try to do something right, we stuff it up.
Now I need to be careful here that you don’t misunderstand me and that I clarify this statement that failing doesn’t mean you have sinned. For instance, if I fail a test or a college assignment, it doesn’t mean that I have sinned. What I am saying is that it is the work of sin that works out its inherent insidious nature in, through, and over us in ways in which we are destined to failure, we will fail and we will continue to fail.
The good news however is that in Christ, God has delivered us and forgiven us of all our sin. This includes all of our failures. And so this morning I felt the Lord whisper into the deep ache in my soul, asking me to give to him all of my failures and to give him all of the fears and anxiety’s that go with them. To be honest, I found that a difficult thing to do, yet its something that deep down I wanted and needed to do.
And so I found myself praying. Father God, I accept your forgiveness and release all of my failures to you. I release all of my fears and anxieties that go with those failures to you. I ask that you release me of them, granting me the deep comfort of knowing that you are for me and not against me in all I do. In Jesus name I prayed.
Trinitarian Dance 
Like the sentiment, when you wrote the poetry was having a gray day myself and could enter in to what you wrote. It is difficcult to share the deep stuff. Often we don’t understand ourselves very well. It takes God to reveal the deep hurts.
I think its important to acknowledge the grey days to both our selves and to God and then we can remind ourselves of God’s truth.
Craig, don’t you find, paradoxically, that the worst of times seem to bring us so much closer to God and reality and love, which somehow also makes them the best of times… To touch eternity is something so infinite and beautiful, that the rough stuff we go through on the way really does seem to fade into insignificance. I know you’ve experienced that, you’ve helped me experience it in a tough time – & pray it for you, more and more!!!
I think the storms are what brings us closer to God. I thank him that he doesn’t leave us in them though.