My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
while men say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
These things I remember as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God,
with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.
I say to God my Rock, “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?”
My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
Driving home from the cancer center today I could hardly see through my tears. It took painful work, but they were able to get my port accessed and get good blood return. I wanted to feel happy about that. I wanted to be thankful. But all I could feel (other than the physical pain) was the overwhelming sense of fear and dread, the “what if?” of the results of bloodwork tomorrow. The scans and tests that loom in the future. The unknown lies heavy over me. The doubts that reign.
I know a large part of my emotion is an exhaustion that is all-encompassing. I am not sleeping well. I am wrestling the dark thoughts and fears that wash over me; chanting prayers all through the night. I am still hypo on my thyroid medication which causes a depression that refuses to lift. I am still in pain from treatment, even from chemo a year ago. I have no appetite and have to force myself to eat so I will have strength. I am emotionally weary from the overwhelming loneliness of days of separation. I long for companionship, for physical touch. I am spiritually weary from the battle… mentally, emotionally, physically.
Y’all these days are hard. I am a roller coaster of emotions. I am three days away from holding my babies again, and I feel guilty because I’m still struggling with depression. Satan wants to rob me of that joy. He doesn’t want me to see the beauty in each day, to be grateful, to grow. He wants the ugliness of cancer to impact me not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually and mentally. He doesn’t want me to live life. He wants me self-consumed and miserable.
Psalm 42 isn’t a happy psalm. He is in depression. He is struggling with questions. He is in agony. He is battling the enemy.
BUT
He is fighting for hope.
He still sings.
He preaches truth to himself.
And so I follow his example and I preach truth to myself. I may be isolated, but He will never abandon me. I may be exhausted, but He is my strength. I may feel like a failure, but He will never fail me. I may buckle under the weight of the blows of the enemy, but He is my shield. I may let go to steady myself, but He will never release His hold on me. I may not be able to sing the harmony, but He is singing over me. I may feel death in my body, but He has conquered death. I may feel as if life is against me, but He is FOR me.
And like the psalmist, I turn on my music and I sing my song of desperation asking God to “consume me from the inside out”.
And like the psalmist, I am fighting for hope.
Because that is one thing I know I have. A future and a hope.
A Spring of Joy 
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