Category: Hard days

Words from the wilderness: Giving Up

Posted on by fabsharford

I wrote these words on a dark day.  I wasn’t thinking of you when I wrote it.  I was just writing.  I didn’t need to share. I wasn’t trying to be saved and I wasn’t looking for comfort. I was just trying to find words to wrap around reality. 

I know there are those of you who church ‘won’t work’ tomorrow. Cause they’ll talk about a Gospel and a God who offers to save you from the dark and you will wonder why that doesn’t work in real life.  Why dark still comes so swiftly and silently with all its suffocating strength if He is who He says He is.  

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Lent 30-33: making space

Posted on by fabsharford

There are emotions that don’t require any space in order to be expressed or experienced.  Fear, for example. You don’t need anyone to back up for you to experience that emotion.  Anxiety too.  You can have people pressing in all sides, life tugging on your sleeve and anxiety is totally at home.

But there are other emotions that need a little space in order to emerge: grief, true joy, intimacy. Honestly, most of the deeper emotions don’t come when you call. They like to have a little room to breathe before they will surface.  They need space.

Space on the calendar.

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Lent 21: are you getting the support you need?

Posted on by fabsharford

I’m learning a lot about social support right now and how much it impacts your life.  (Warning: as I prep for finals, I’m guessing a lot of these lent blogs are going to be related to what I’m learning).

It’s made me think a lot about the various support I receive/perceive from friends, church and God, so I thought I’d share.

Psychologists tend to think of social support as offering four different things:

  1. Instrumental support (providing the necessities of life): these are the people who organize the meal train and offer to babysit.
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Lent 6: disappointment that binds

Posted on by fabsharford

All this talk of disappointment.  How come?  What does it have to do with Lent or even the love thing I first was writing about.

Maybe not much for you, but as I said in the beginning, this Lenten journey is about me and Him and disappointment does have a thing or two to do with me and Him these days.

See, I’m usually the fastest to bounce back from disappointment, but for the first time am feeling its lingering effects.  Normally I am crushed and then rebound, but this time around I am seeing it: I am noticing a heart withdraw, withhold in a way that is new for me.  I’m seeing it in my relationships with people and with God, and so, this is a thing for us this Lenten season.

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