House on the Rock

It was the morning of September 26. I was curled up in the fetal position on my in-laws’ living room couch. They conveniently lived ten minutes from the hospital where my mom was transported, so we — my siblings, Joe, and Riley — shacked up there for the night. Mom was still unresponsive. Dad had not slept a wink as he prayed through the night by her side. 

I still had no appetite. I had barely slept. I was experiencing the fullness of “groaning too deep for words,” unable to formulate cohesive prayers. I was losing my beloved mother and best friend. I could barely utter, “God, help me.” 

Desperate for some encouragement, I flipped to the Psalms. Time and time again, I felt like the Psalms weren’t sad enough for me. I was on the brink of despair — caught in the darkest valley we had ever walked, but I felt (wrongly) as though the Psalmists didn’t understand the depths of my agony. 

Or maybe they did at first, but they quickly turned to chipper celebrations of God’s faithfulness. And I knew God was faithful, but to be completely honest, I wasn’t there yet. My head knew that we serve a good and faithful God, yet my heart was collapsing into a grief and pain so deep that I didn’t know if I’d make it up for air. I needed Psalms that were every bit as sad as I was, and I didn’t want anyone — Psalmists included — to paint a rainbow over the wreckage.

Psalm 13 was a place I returned to often. It starts with this:

“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day?” (vs. 1-2).

And I thought yes! Finally! This is exactly how I’m feeling! How long will we suffer like this? How long will my mom not respond? Agony is in my mind every day — someone is finally as sad as I am.

But then I’d get to the latter half, and I’d go back to feeling misunderstood. David goes on to write,

“but I have trusted in your faithful love; my heart will rejoice in your deliverance. I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously” (vs. 5-6).

No no no!, I thought. I’m not there yet! How can they all flip to such joyful worship already?! My mom is still dying. Still not responding. Still being ravaged by cancer and seizures and my brother gets married in 12 days and we had so many plans and this is not how it was supposed to be! 

For that whole week and the weeks to follow, I couldn’t bring myself to the latter half of Psalm 13. Logically, I knew it to be true. Emotionally, I was stuck in verses 1-2. 

I began to grow angry. Not at God, but merely at my circumstances. At the fallenness of this world. At the suffering of my mom that I could not fix. At the timing, so close to Cam’s wedding. I did (and do) know God is only good. He is for us. Working and willing all things for His glory. But my head and my heart weren’t connecting. I was stuck in the sad part of the Psalms, disgruntled that they all seemed to skip past suffering so quickly.

It is the middle section of Psalm 13 — the one I so often skipped over — that I believe to be so instructive for us in moving beyond mourning. To get from point A (agony) to point B (praise), there is a long bridge of faithful pleading with God. It took me a long time to get there. This middle section pleads:

“Consider me and answer, Lord my God. Restore brightness to my eyes;
otherwise, I will sleep in death.
My enemy will say, “I have triumphed over him,”
and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken” (vs. 3-4).

“Restore brightness to my eyes,” he begs. Other translations say “enlighten.” David seems to recognize that in his misery, he is not seeing God clearly. God has not forgotten him — not for a moment has David been forsaken. But suffering can cloud our vision, pigeonholing God as a far-off forgetter who has left us to our own devices. That’s what can keep us at point A, refusing to cross the bridge that leads us to hope-filled rejoicing. 

In those times that I couldn’t move past verses 1 and 2, it was because I was unwilling to take my eyes off the storm and look to the Savior. I didn’t want brightness in my eyes. I wanted to fixate on the pain, and I could have gotten stuck there. To get stuck there would be fatal, at least spiritually speaking. David says, “otherwise, I will sleep in death.” Basically, “If you don’t restore my eyes to see your goodness, I will spiritually decay.” Thinking only of our agony and never of the remedy could cause us to question God’s goodness, His steadfast love, His perfect plan. But when He enlightens our eyes, restoring brightness and removing the clouds, this is when we begin crossing the bridge. 

It reminds me of the Casting Crowns song, “Just Be Held” — If your eyes are on the storm, you’ll wonder if I love you still. But if your eyes are on the cross, you’ll know I always have and I always will. 

It’s not that David just jumps immediately to praise. Rather, David regains his footing after begging God to help him see clearly. He says “I have trusted” in the past tense, almost as if he remembers that he really did trust God, and God had been there all along, and His deliverance has always been sure.

William Gurnall observes that David “begins his prayer as if he thought God would never give him a kind look more…. But by the time he had exercised himself a little in duty, his distemper wears off, the mists scatter, and his faith breaks out as the sun in its strength.” (William Gurnall, cited in Spurgeon).

Beautiful, what the power of prayer can do. How a little pleading, some enlightened eyes, and begging God to restore brightness will allow us to move from hopeless agony to hopeful confidence in God’s deliverance. It’s not that the Psalms weren’t sad enough — it’s that I wasn’t letting my eyes be enlightened to the promise and goodness of God. 

I think we can’t always expect to move from Psalm 13:1 to Psalm 13:5 in a day’s time without any effort. It seems easy, even desirable. I wanted to bask in the cries of “how long, Lord?” and then magically wake up the next day singing and rejoicing. 

But this is not automatic. It takes work. It takes discipline. While His mercies are new every morning, it requires some effort on our end — faithful pleading, step by step. Begging God for those enlightened eyes, and trusting He’ll provide them. Committing ourselves to this prayer as weary travelers crossing a battered bridge for as long as it takes. Over and over again.