Dr. Henry Cloud… What happens when we hit bottom……
“When we hit bottom, when we realize that this really is true, we “lose it.” We break. And we cry. This sadness is the letting go of what was an idealized, expected reality, a hoped-for dream. It is saying goodbye to what can never be.
But it is the beginning of true healing as well. ………. The emotional investment in whatever was lost is being given up. The wish and desire are being “counted as loss,” as Paul said. We are letting go of what cannot be. Reality and our heart, mind, and soul have all come together, and we cry. Tears are shed, and after many, many tears, we let go. “I will never have it, so I will let go of the wish.” And like a leaf falling into a stream, free of the tree that lost it, it goes away.”
Have you been there? I have. I remember one day, in particular, in 1998, when I got some news that devastated my expectations about the possibility of an earnesstly desired and hoped-for outcome, that dashed my hope of justice being done, of a wrong being righted, and vision of the future that would be more hopeful than what had been evidenced in the past involving an institution and group of people I loved.
I was struggling that day not only with my grief and disappointment about what had occurred, but I was struggling also with what, in the name of a just and righteous God, was he doing in allowing this situation to take such a turn? It would be several years later before God would show me that the impact that day’s news had on me not only revealed a lack of understanding of the vastness and timelessness of God’s patience and mercy, but also was indicative of a deep-rooted idolatry in my own soul that God would deal with first. That idolatry would be revealed and dealt with nearly 20 years later, as God continued to speak to my spirit about the timelessness of his patience and mercy, with me personally as an individual every bit as much as with all his people every where.
God is still bringing about what will ultimately be the resolution of the situation over which I grieved in 1998, but I have been able to see and undertand the red thread of God’s redeeming work far better as I have learned to see the fuller view of God’s patient mercy balanced with his righteous justice.