"...and Your gentleness made me great."

The other evening as I drove home in the darkness of a cold, still evening with my babies fast asleep in the seats behind me, I talked to the Lord. I was considering my year as it came to a close; a year where the slowness of my crawl from fear of growth and the seeming stagnancy of my spiritual life stood out in my mind as my greatest laments. I considered the things I had walked though and my inability to return to where I had been before various life events had crashed into me like waves that transform the shorelines they beat against. And as I thought about the realities of the weaknesses that made me hesitant to seek or feel change in my life, I realized, through tears, that while in the past my deepest growths had been accompanied by my deepest pains, this year my deepest growths had been accompanied by my deepest comforts. This verse entered my mind and has rolled through it ever since:

Psalm 18: 35 “You have given me the shield of Your salvation, and Your right had supported me, and Your gentleness made me great.”
 
If I have one thing to say about my life in the year 2013, it is that the Lord has been gentle with me. At every failing turn, in every bewildering bout of weakness, beside all of my lamenting sorrows, He has responded to, met with and upheld me in the gentlest of ways. When I shouted, He whispered; when I wept, He held me; when I floundered, He set pillars around me; when I was too tired to lift my head, He laid down beside me; when I faltered, He offered me another chance; when I was without words, He told me the truth; when I was afraid, He held my hand; when I was without the strength to lift my burdens, He lent me the backs of His people; and when I forgot Him, He remained beside me, above me, below me, before me, behind me, inside me...so that no matter where I turned to see His face it was there--shining, shielding, soothing, sufficient.

This was a year where life and growth were offered to me in unfamiliar ways, it was a year of learning to receive and accept when my hands were empty of anything to offer in return. It was a year not marked by new pains, but by the slow healing of old pains that linger. It may not have been a year of flourishing, of returning to the place of peace and strength where I had previously stood...but instead, it was a year of sustaining and of realizing that I am not meant to go back (even if the place I had to leave behind was peaceful and nourishing). Where I am going this new year, I don’t know. But this is what I do know: There are dimensions of the Lord--His mercy, His grace, His sufficiency, His power, His holiness, His justice, His love--that I will know at the end of it that I would never have glimpsed had I not trudged my way through this valley.

Because this is what I know to be true of the Lord:

Ezekiel 34:11–26
For thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I, I myself will search for My sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so I will seek out My sheep, and I will rescue them from all the places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them OUT from the peoples and gather them IN to their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down...I Myself will be the shepherd of My sheep, and I Myself will make them lie down,” declares the Lord God. “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak...”
 
When the Lord brings His people from the places of clouds and darkness, He is always faithful to bring them to a place of provision, safety and rest, where He graciously tends to them in whatever condition He has found them; displaying His gentle sufficiency and mercy at He meets their every need.

The Lord has been gentle with me. Gentle in words, gentle in touch, gentle in mercy...where I have expected pain, again and again He has applied healing balm and a gentle word. And that changes a person for the better. I may not recognize the changes at this moment, but I feel myself change with every encounter I have with this gentle Lord of mine. While I do not know what is coming in 2014, I know who I am with...and that is enough to fuel hope for the remainder of my lifetime and the forever that follows.