I'm pretty sure it would be better to wake up feeling chipper, bright, alive. Maybe we should all float out of bed and twirl around the room humming a Disney theme like Snow White as the little forest animals help us smooth the bedclothes, sweep the cottage floor and fling wide the shutters for a shimmering new day, but that hasn't been my experience yet.
I woke up this morning feeling a whole lot more like Grumpy, ready to snap at anyone or anything that happened to stumble into my swarthy path. My breath reeks, my feet and back hurt, and my eyes are refusing to focus. I feel about a half-million years old, like a brontosaurus that somehow woke up in my house this morning, transported miraculously from the paleolithic era to the 21st Century. I haven't had my second shot of java yet so that may be half the problem. Or it might be the seemingly immense battles I'm facing right now that make the bed so appealing despite all the little forest animals waiting outside to play.
Sometimes I feel like my life has been one giant mood swing. I can feel victorious in Christ one minute and low as the fortieth ring of Dante's Inferno the next. Life can be one big party or one big misery in about a nano-second. Anti-depressants don't help artistic types all that much, either. They might smooth the edges a little but they can also take away the depths of feeling that feed our creativity. Some of those meds could turn Michelangelo into an accountant. Too much alcohol just feeds the darkness as many of the great writers found out to their detriment.
The only consistent answer I've found so far is to feel whatever I need to feel and go on with life knowing that whatever I feel right now, good or bad, will probably change in about five minutes. I am like the weather in Portland. I'm just a feeling-based person. So sue me. I am wired intrinsically to my emotions and, for the life of me, cannot extricate myself from the ups and downs of my silly little insides. The good news is that God loves me enough to have made David, Asaph, and the other psalm writers open up their insides long ago so I wouldn't feel so bad, at least for the five minutes or so that I read them.
In Psalm 69:1-4 David writes out of his anguish (and I'm sure stinky bad breath because he had to hide in caves a lot):
"Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to
my neck.
I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.
I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail
looking for my God.
Those who hate me without reason
outnumber the hairs of my head;
many are my enemies without cause,
those who seek to destroy me.
I am forced to restore
what I did not steal."
David had some very real enemies. His own son, Absolom, wanted to cut his head off. He was a warrior-king who felt things at a very deep emotional level, like me, and he wasn't afraid to wear a tunic and play a harp. He kicked butt and wrote songs. So far my worst enemies are in my head and my teen-aged daughter still wants me to drive her to the mall. I don't own a tunic or an ephod but I do have some baggy jeans. I'm just learning that it's okay to sing a lament or two along with the happy-clappy praise stuff that can momentarily lift any of us out of the doldrums.
Maybe that's the real lesson here. God is big enough to hear the praise and take the complaints. He doesn't love us more when we're happy than when we're sad. He is with us in the good and the bad, when we want to love Him and when we can't understand why He doesn't seem to be listening. He sees us when we're on the mountaintop and when we're hiding in a cave somewhere fearing for our lives. Maybe it's just okay to feel what we feel and remember that Jesus was well acquainted with our weaknesses. Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet without sin."
I was tempted to stay in the bed today. I may be tempted to play the part of Grumpy the Brontosaurus Dwarf all day if things don't seem to be going my way or if I don't seem to be getting what I want. I may snap and bite at my loved ones if I don't think life is fair and I may even complain to God. If I do, at least I will be in good company. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow feeling a little more like Happy, Doc, or Sneezy. In the meantime, brontosaurus for breakfast, anyone?
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