In Grief, It’s All about the BUT

So many of my posts these days are following the format of the Psalms.  This terrible thing happened, but God . . .

Have you ever noticed, almost every Psalm of crisis or complaint follows this pattern?  Someone once told me all but one Psalm ends praising God.  I guess one day, the author just didn’t have it in him to continue.

This verse is so typical, “My flesh and my heart my fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.  Psalms 73:26

The later part of the verse does not make the first part disappear.  The first part still happens, no matter how much strength God gives to my heart.

My posts do this often.  Actually, sometimes, like yesterday, my post actually first stops before the BUT, but then I take a breath and finish.  Even this one about choosing gratefulness actually originally stopped before any mention of gratefulness.

Someone very wise told me, “Grief is about learning that God is there every time you run to him and sometimes you will run to him 1000 a day.”

This is just so true.  I’ve described this time as a time of sitting in the waves.  Waves of emotions come and go, and each time God is there.  As time passes and some times I’ll have a day or two of calm, the waves are more likely to sneak up on me and knock me off my feet.  Some days the waves are still constant and some days they are even bigger than they were the first day.  But I’m learning that God will be there every time.

I never would have chosen to learn this lesson this way, but is there any other way for us to learn it.  Is there anything besides grief and suffering that would really cause us to run to God 1000 times a day, so that we truly learn that he is always there?