1-6-09

I was talking to a friend recently who was sharing about a rather difficult year. But here was the thing, nothing in particular happened in the past 12 months that could explain it. And there had been other years with specific events that created great difficulty that didn’t seem as bad. So the question that came of the conversation was “Are there just seasons like this?”

I think the answer can be “yes… sometimes there are just rough seasons”, but I wonder if it isn’t usually more a case of an underlying matter that’s been there much, much longer but only recently came to light.

My Dad used to drive a garbage truck for a living, a lot of residential routes, but mostly commercial for several years. He was up and out of the house before dawn and often working in the dark through the cold winter months. I imagine there were plenty of alleys and parking lots with enormous dumpsters and walled off refuse areas with gates and fences to navigate. I can’t begin to estimate the amount of cut glass, metal and wire he would encounter on any given day. I remember he would come home and head straight to the bathroom to change. He’d emerge before dinner and sit at the table and show us all the cuts and bruises he had discovered in the shower. I used to be amazed that he didn’t know he had them until then. I’d ask him how he didn’t feel a scrape 4 inches long and what looked to be fairly deep while it was happening and he would shrug. I thought it was so odd that he didn’t feel any pain when he got the wound and didn’t even notice it until clean water and soap were pouring over them.

I think that’s how it often works in life. We don’t feel our wounds when they are happening or even notice them the rest of the day, but when we begin to get washed clean the pain wells up as they become so apparent. That’s certainly true in the life of a Christian. The more you know of God and His holiness, the more the light shines on sin. It all begins to come to the surface.

This is a good thing. But it doesn’t tend to feel that way.