Dismissal time! Woo-hoo! (…but until then…)

As a school nurse, (like everyone else working with kids), there are Mondays, and then there are Mondaze.  But through it all, I can always count on this—the dismissal bell. 

Here is an email response I had from my husband from his office back in 2011:

“The titles of your last two emails are telling: ‘Great Weekend’ followed by ‘Crazy Morning’.   My imagination is racing: blood dripping from the walls, a contagion that turns students into zombies (all marching lock-step toward your office), sewage backing up from the toilet in your office, a Fed Ex truck out front and a driver in the front office announcing loudly, ‘Paperwork for Dawn Jones…Where do you want all these boxes?’”

And that’s on a good Monday.

Makes it just a wee bit easier to see what the writer of this Psalm must be feeling~~

Now I am deeply discouraged,
    but I will remember you—

I hear the tumult of the raging seas
    as your waves and surging tides sweep over me.
But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me,
    and through each night I sing his songs,
    praying to God who gives me life.

“O God my rock,” I cry,
    “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I wander around in grief,
    oppressed by my enemies?”
Their taunts break my bones.
    They scoff, “Where is this God of yours?”

Why am I discouraged?
    Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
    I will praise him again—
    my Savior and my God!

I agree with David Kitz at I Love The Psalms because, well….I love the Psalms.  They present such a raw and real look into the human struggle with the why’s and what’s of daily life experience.  Here is absolutely no attempt to resolve the confusion that is endemic to our existence, no glossy photoshop’d Facebook post of hilarious happiness.  In fact, in this particular passage, I was puzzled by the seemingly flip-flop theology presented by the writer.  Is God there, or is He not?  Is God taking care of me, or am I on my own? 

Then I realize that this passage is not about God’s faithfulness, but mine.  Resolute faithfulness, determined tenacity, both of which cannot be mined out of the human heart and soul without the dynamite blasts of life.

So, by God’s grace, zombies or not, I will choose faithfulness…

…until the final dismissal bell.

Psalm 42:6-11  Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.