It’s Monday evening and my husband says, “You’re in a mood, today. You know that right?”
I nod, and take another bite of cold salad.
“Is it the rain?”
I pause to hear the drumbeat of water falling from the sky. This is not the patter of little feet dancing on my roof.
“We need the rain,” I sigh. “But I miss the sun.”
The sun: that giant, fireball that emanates warmth, and light, and draws my eyes upward to celestial heights. I know the sun’s still there if I could just fly above the gray clouds that hang over me like a heavy tarp.
When I’m in a melancholy mood, I browse through my spiritual journals, hoping for previous insights or a spark to fan the embers. On this particular January day, several years ago, I’d written in my God Calling journal, “Today is gray and cold. I lack joy and feel indifferent towards the Lord.”
The enemy loves to use January weather to derail me.
In that same journal, I’d underlined a sentence, “You must say ‘Thank You’ on the grayest days. You must do it. All cannot be light unless you do. There is gray-day practice. It is absolutely necessary.”
There’s the formula to an improved mood. Did it work?
I turn the page where I’d written about an awesome worship time with the Lord, and the verse. “He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
I scan scribbled words, written from a heart anchored to God in the storm, “We are on a life journey which consists of hills and valleys where our vision is limited. We can’t know what’s coming around the bend. So we take one step at a time, knowing He is with us, and “walk by faith and not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7 NAS)
I close the journal, my scrapbook of heartaches and joy-filled God moments. I’m not sure what plagued my soul back then. Perhaps it was the rain. But I know how I escaped the pit of indifference and despair.
I sought the Lord even when I wasn’t in the mood. I praised His name and said ‘Thank you’ even when I didn’t feel grateful.
“I am your God. Your Great Reward. Yours to look up and say, ‘All is well.’”
And so He is, and my soul is well, even in this…..