Once again today’s Bible passage reminds me of a song. I remember the first time I heard this song. I was around four or five years old. I was watching the episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood that was aired between two episodes of Sesame Street. During the Neighborhood of Make-Believe sequence, King Friday and Queen Sara are listening to a band play while an artist draws a picture inspired by the song. The artist drew a picture of a baby while she listened to the band play Turn, Turn, Turn.
https://youtu.be/W3xgcmIS3YU?si=FxMNs49LW3Ln6Utk
Today’s Bible passage is Ecclesiastes 3:1-20. We are told there’s a time for everything. It’s not that there is enough time to do everything. Rather, that all things – good and bad are part of life. Life is not all or nothing. There will be times of happiness and times of sadness.
I have spent most of my life running from or denying any painful emotions. They were too painful to face or deal with, so I pretended that everything was fine, when it wasn’t. In the past year, I have let myself experience some of the “bad” emotions that I stuffed. No, I didn’t have fun crying or getting angry. But, I experienced a genuine happiness and a genuine peace as a result of allowing myself to feel.
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account. And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgment—wickedness was there, in the place of justice—wickedness was there. I said to myself, ‘God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed.’ I also said to myself, ‘As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.’ ”
Ecclesiastes 3:1-20 NIV
Dear Lord, I have learned that life is not always a life filled with rainbows and puppies. Life is painful sometimes. I get that we can’t necessarily live from one extreme or the other. But, life in the middle can be just as painful. It’s much easier for me to live in the extremes. I know what to do when I am happy or sad. But, what do I do when I am neither? What do I do when there’s no feelings? When I just exist, but don’t really live? When life feels aimless and purposeless? Lord, I know that You are with me. Thank goodness for that. Lord, I want to feel all of my feelings, even the ones that hurt. I don’t want to be stuck in some kind of no-man’s land. Stuffing my feelings to avoid pain didn’t work. I went around with a smile on my face, while hurting inside – kind of like Smokey Robinson’s Teardrops of a Clown. I am done with pretending. I want to live a life where I am authentically myself. I no longer have the mental capacity for lying. It’s too much to remember which person I told what to. It’s so much easier to tell the truth to everyone. That way I can use my memory for other things, like where I parked my car at the grocery store. God, I am also done with not trusting You completely. I have no evidence to prove that I can run my life better than you. I have the opposite – tons of examples where things have been less than ideal because I insisted on having my own way. God, I have had pain in the past and I am experiencing pain now, and will probably have pain in the future. God, if I am going to have to go through pain, don’t let it be for nothing. Help me to use my painful experiences to help others. You can do anything. Please give me directions on where to go next and who I can help when I arrive. Yes, I know that life has ups and downs. Lord, show me how to live in the down times in a healthy way. I don’t want to fall back into old patterns of coping or not coping, as the case may be. God, I can’t see the future. I will have to trust You to give me my directions. After I make the decision to change, the only way that I can sustain the changes is through You. Please don’t go away God. Stay close. I know that I will need You. Amen.
Journey with Monica 