Winter is Dark, God is Good.

There is power in proclaiming God is good when it doesn’t feel like He is. There is power in looking at our circumstances, the less than’s, the disappointments, the wondering’s if we’re ever going to be ok’s and still proclaiming God is good. Always good. 

I’m sitting at home in a still house, the city truly bustling around me with every window in the house open. It’s 64 degrees, sunny, in the beginnings of February and I’ve got a sick baby snoozing upstairs. I’ve also got an eight year old boy performing (one of his favorite things) in his third grade musical at school right now. I’m not there. I could have fought to be there, I could have made it happen one way or another, but this week has been a doozy. We’ve been juggling sick kids, jobs that don’t stop when sick kids enter the mix, and a month of missing the marriage mark. Phil and I are tired. Weary to the bone. We have been feeling winter in our hearts more than normal as we’ve both felt God’s leading to work on our wounds. We feel raw and our emotions and reactions are wearing on each other. But kids also don’t stop needing even when mom and dad are limping, so we’re showing up with tear streaked cheeks. 

As I’m wrestling in my thoughts, wondering if we’re harboring sin somewhere or if we’ve just forgotten who God is…AGAIN, I see an Instagram post from our friend Nathan. Nathan lost his wife last year right after she birthed their first baby girl. Nathan posted about a new song, a song called “Always Good” by Andrew Peterson (take a listen HERE). If Nathan can find respite in this song in the midst of the pain he’s enduring I thought maybe there’d be something in there for me too. And I found something I didn’t expect to find while listening to this song. I found power. In the singer/songwriter calm coming out of the speakers I felt an urge to be able to say the words, “YOU ARE ALWAYS GOOD” over every gaping hole in my life. To say it through sobs, to say it through anger, to say it as I rock my baby in the middle of the night while her fever rages on. 

If Nathan, who lost his sweet, young, supportive, strong wife can identify with the truth that God is always good, I can too. I can too. And it isn’t trivial. Holding onto these words while working steadily through the pains of this world is not to dismiss the trials. It is to acknowledge why I walk in the first place. Because God is good. I pray this over you, your circumstances, your hopes. God is good.