You know it’s been a day when you’re up writing because you can’t sleep and it’s not even 10pm.

It’s been one of those days where the best thing you can do is put it to bed and start fresh but then you lie awake with your heart pounding and you realize that there’s no sleep coming for you anytime soon. Your heart races and seems so much louder than normal. Your thoughts whirl and you hope against hope that all the details that you’ve missed won’t end up being deal breakers.

It’s been the kind of day where you try to follow the advice of ‘list 5 things you did well’ and you don’t have the head space or the energy to try and figure out where your small successes may have occurred. You can see the small wins from a detached, disembodied distance but the bigger picture makes the pixel details impossible to discern.

Looming life elements like potential job change, renovations, your daughter’s inability to independently manage finding matching socks, children all in school for the first time in almost 13 years, extended family shifting in their living situations, illness, loss, compassion, mercy, and numbness.

All these things combine and whirl as if they were being stirred with a crooked handled wooden spoon.

And you try to see your way through the shallow breathing and verging overwhelmdness that was tipped over when you forgot to do that one thing that wasn’t a big thing at all but it was a big thing to you because it was the little thing that represents all the big things under the surface.

Breathe.

 

 

Nice try.

So you go to bed and curl up under your covers and wonder why in the world your husband wants the fan on when you’re feeling slightly chilled and shaky.

And you pray.

You pray to calm down, because nothing else is working.

You pray and ask for all the answers to all the questions that you think will bring all the peace.

You pray and you lose track and you huddle before God with one last final statement.

I’m not ok.

And it scares you. It scares you that you have to voice this sentiment even in the dark under the covers pulled up to your eyebrows.

You’re scared to voice it because voicing it makes it true and you’re not the kind of person that gives up that way. Because there’s always something you can do to be ok. There’s always a way to be ok.

 

But I’m not ok. 

 

Because, God,  the things I’m doing aren’t answers to what’s really going on. Because I need you to show me the way and it seems like you’re just saying wait and you’re silent while I wait.

Because I want things to stop swirling yet I’m afraid of where I will land because the known whirlpool somehow seems less scary than the peaceful unknown.

Because I don’t know how to fix this and I don’t feel ok because I don’t know how to fix this.

And I lie under the covers and wait, expecting to feel the same, not expecting an answer because there might not be an answer yet.

 

 

But you are ok.

 

What?!? There is no way that I’m ok.

 

You’re ok because I’ve made you ok.

You’re ok because I died on the cross for you.

 

At the core of who I am, I am ok.

I am ok because through Jesus’ death and resurrection for me, no matter what happens to me, nothing can make me not ok in his eyes.

The swirling, the heavy heart and shallow lungs, the ache, all of this does not change that at the core of who God created me to be, I am ok.

And being ok does not mean no stress, no heartache, no confusion or anger, no sadness.

Being ok might mean that I don’t handle my stress well, that grieving makes me less able to love well, that there will be days with more misses than hits.

Being ok means that there will be times when I feel intensely not ok.

But even then, even in the midst of that, there’s the thread of Jesus’ promise “I have made you ok in my eyes”

Being ok means that in my future, here or heavenly, all will be made right and new. There will be redemption and fulfilled promises and presence and joy. Hope is not lost because Jesus’ sacrifice meant that I am made right with him.

That’s the promise I cling to.

That’s the focus amidst the whirl.

That’s the deep breath of my soul when I feel shallow and unrooted.

It’s the promise that no matter what my perception of my reality, skewed or truthful, the anchor point is Jesus’ certainty of my forgiveness and his love for me.

So I’m ok even when I’m not ok.