The Mean Reds

"The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?" -Audrey Hepburn

Tendrils of sunlight break through the edges of the curtains, speckling the floor and bed. The warmth finally killing the thousand days of rain and cold.

But even the sunshine can't end the unexplainable feelings swirling inside like a thunderstorm.
I started this post back in the spring as I adjusted to life in a new state and community, but I couldn't seem to find my words. I felt like I had been silenced and the passion that drives my writing disappeared.

The fears of past hurts and mistakes at times still haunt me. I can't shake the feeling that as soon as I start to enjoy my life, everything is going to come crashing down around me.

I felt like anything I wrote would just make me a hypocrite. How dare I share anything with others when I couldn't even believe it myself?

But God.

Every single time I read those two words, I pause.

But. God.

It's a powerful reminder that God is bigger than anything else in my life. God is always good, no matter my current circumstances. I'm not strong enough or smart enough to foil God's plans for my life, and I'm so glad I don't have to live a life enslaved to past mistakes or fear changing life situations.

"BUT GOD, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved," Ephesians 2: 4-5.

The juxtaposition of what we deserve with the grace God grants us is beautiful and encouraging.

"The Lord is merciful and gracious,

    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,

    nor will he keep his anger forever.

He does not deal with us according to our sins,

    nor repay us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,

    so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west, 

    so far does he remove our transgressions from us."

Psalm 103: 8-12

Pondering God's truth, I can consider all things joy as James instructs us in chapter 1, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." 

My pastor explained it this way: to consider it joy doesn't mean feeling happiness. It means thinking about or reckoning in a way that is unnatural for our circumstances. It means clinging to God's truth and allowing that to create our mindset, granting stability in a chaotic world.

So, dear friend (and I say this to myself), my challenge based on this truth is to memorize a passage that you can cling to when the lies, fears and doubts attack. To find a rock to cling to and remind you where your identity and joy comes from when the world is less than kind.