Day 4097 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 31:22 NIV

What is desperation?

Is it a final yet violent separation found between a hope you have and a realization that you can’t force it to be had? Is it a person devolving into such a depth of personal despair that they believe all of life itself is beyond repair? It is a soul dissolving into a manner involving such pain and panic that it just can’t stand it? Is it suddenly finding we either don’t know how to stand nor what we might stand for thanks to so much so heavy so suddenly stood against us?

Is it the result of a life gone against us, the same as has happened already, just now something happening again that we again can’t stand?

Is it a disappointment so deep that we even make friends with dejection and enemies of sleep?

Whatever it is it sure seems to be something each of us have seen inside entirely too many times in life. For each of us have been known to do some rather desperate stuff when it seems to us that the stuff around us, or perhaps even that within, just isn’t at all what we need it to be, wish it were, planned for it to become. Indeed, there’ve come many times inside each of our lives in which we just bottomed out as we stood speechless watching all our hopes and dreams and goals and things lie motionless upon the ground before us.

All while we suddenly realized that we knew not how to keep them alive anymore.

Because that’s one of the settings here inside this pressure cooker of life. It’s that reading we feel often we’re meeting in which all that had meaning and made any sense seems only to be singed, scorched, so held to the torch that is trial and torment that eventually everything starts to feel this portent of only problem and pain. Both of which are things we’d all readily agree we’ve all already seen entirely too many times. And that because, well, they’re nothing we wish to see ever.

Let alone as often as we have.

Which is what seems to form the basis for our seemingly general belief that our lives are bad. Or if not even that that they’re at least not all that good. And if not that then that they’re definitely far from great. And that even on those days in which things do go our way and most things thus turn out okay. Even inside those days, rare though they be, seems always that still we can see more than plenty of room for improvements the same.

Problem then becomes that we’ve all become so jaded to the journey that any extra effort asked, such as that aimed said “improvements the same” is likely to be readily considered entirely non-conducive to the overall delusion that we still, for whatever reason, seem to enjoy making friends with.

It’s this idea that we deserve life to be easy and always filled with then our feeling at ease, rested and recovered so as to ensure we’re ready to meet the next moment unsteady as head-on as never we do.

Indeed, we’ve invented this version of life in which, even should something go right, we’ll still seek for the easiest and quickest way through so that we find that we feel assured of having achieved, accomplished that which we’d felt we were due. It’s something of a strange doubling-down on doubt though, or at least so it seems to me.

For can we honestly be so filled with greed, gluttony and the selfishness which gives them both all the hope they have only for us that never we trust in time needing to slow down, our needing to be patient, our perhaps even needing to feel pain or face problem so as to ensure that we both see the full picture and also know as much as we might of He who is the Painter?

Alas it seems that sometimes the pain’s just too much to allow for us to slow down, to take it all in, to give those proverbial roses a sniff as we sit in quiet loneliness wondering as to the meaning of all this.

Because we usually don’t care about the meaning, the message, the meeting with thine Messenger who came to tell us that in this world we’d have trouble so as to help us ready to do so.

No. Rather we’re always in this hurry to always be happy, always feel whole, always find some way to fancy up our hole in this world unwholesome so as to feel we’ve some reward here to enjoy. We’re always tied expressly to this expecting of things to go our way, even though such a thing itself changes by the day thanks to our opinions and preferences proving to accomplish the same. We’re a people perfectly impatient, and yes, perhaps that’s because life is hard and we wish justifiably to get through the worst as quickly as possible.

But what if we need to feel such things as desperation and the despair which often breathes air unto it?

What if we need to feel those moments of such deep uncertainty that we feel as if all of life itself is unraveling? What if we need to experience seasons so straining and scary that we just crumble right out of bed in the morning and barely back into the same by the same night? What if we need this life to cause us to become so worried and worn, wearied from both so that we can finally find and feel the meaning of that which is hope?

For hope has to always be for something we don’t have.

And, well, what then makes it easier to have hope than a life that’s chosen to go in absolutely no way close to anything that we’d consider this way our own? In fact, doesn’t something such as desperation only serve to light the proverbial fire inside that seeks to find something better than whatever it was that’s left us feeling so desperate?

What is it to feel desperate?

Well, according to Cambridge it’s defined as “feeling that you have no hope and are ready to do anything to change the bad situation you are in”, or “needing or wanting something very much” such as to change a bad situation you’re in or finally reach a better situation in which you’re not, or “something which is very serious or bad, very great or extreme, a willingness to thus become dangerous if need be”.

In other words desperation is our having arrived at what is that end of our rope that so many talk about and finding there that we both don’t like that feeling and thus finding ourselves feeling rather willing to do some, well, desperate things to remedy the situation.

Indeed, desperation defines a situation so desperate that we ourselves despair of it. We hate it. We loathe it. We cannot wait to finally leave it as we move on from it toward what rapidly becomes literally anything as, well, literally anything would undeniably prove a vastly improved situation. Yes, it’s the experiencing of something so very bad that we’re finally so very disturbed that we become finally willing to do something. To change something. To say something.

Maybe even to lose something.

All because we want so badly to get away from this something that’s left us feeling so lost, so hopeless, so helpless that, feeling as without hope and far from help, we finally become willing to do whatever it takes to beat the brakes off of ourselves so that our sails can finally turn into the wind as it winds to find a better version of life as was always waiting for us to realize that our way was only winning what would become the outcome it became.

One in which so little ended up going our way that we ourselves become willing to set our way on fire so that we can just get away from feeling the way we do.

Because desperation is a feeling that inspires us to move like none other we know.

Indeed, I believe that a desperate person is willing to do more to save themselves than any, save for Christ, have even proven willing to do out of love.

Desperation is arguably more moving than love ever was, at least unto us.

And why is that?

Because we’ve spent our lives loving only ourselves. And it’s because of this that we now exist so tied to our trying to find this version of life that’s always easy, always safe, one that then leaves us always feeling calm and protected and secure and thus assured of never having to endure such things as struggling or being scared.

Because those things have no place in our plans. Rather our plans are always for those places and paths upon which we can walk without a care or concern as everything has there finally learned to cater to us and thus ensure unto us the entirety of all that we want all of life to be.

Problem with that is that life doesn’t work that way.

Instead life seems to be more days most fond of going against our hopes and dreams. Life seems to enjoy mocking our opinions and proving our perspectives as foolish as possible. Indeed, many days it almost seems as if God Himself is up there intent upon seeing just how much we can take in what are lives that often feel as if they’re going more Job’s way than ours in that He takes away more than we feel He gives as He gives grief upon grief until we ourselves start losing sleep as we try, desperately mind you, to keep hope from slipping itself.

And yet it has.

We’ve all of us experienced many moments in life in which hope was nowhere to be found, not even anywhere to be assumed. No, we’ve all known this version of life in which nothing went right but instead it all went so very wrong that even breathing started to feel decidedly precarious an occupation. Yeah, life’s at times gone so badly that we became afraid of breathing as we worried that it might give away our place of hiding from what seemed the sum of everything that had become our enemy.

I believe this is why so many have settled for a life spent hiding in all these safe places and comfort zones.

It’s because we’ve become a people entirely averse to the entire ordeal. We don’t want to deal with conflict or confrontation. We don’t want to mess with making mistakes or even simple misunderstandings. Indeed, we don’t even care to keep standing anymore. Rather we seem none too happy to exist laid upon the floor as, from down here, it’s pretty easy to avoid most of the misery as we know that the heat rises and, having discovered thanks to past bouts with desperation that we cannot in fact handle the heat, well, we now stay out the kitchen.

Literally. There’s a growing percentage of the population who don’t know how to cook.

Maybe because we’ve allowed such things as gluttony and impatience to instill within us a constant sense of desperation that has many of us lost believing that if we don’t keep eating we’re simply going to die.

We won’t as, well, many here have plenty in the tank to keep them going for a while.

But that doesn’t seem to do much to quell this worry we watch the world feel. Instead it seems that most continue ahead rather convinced that they’re always at risk of missing out and so they need to ensure they’re covered, fed, safe and protected should life ever dare even attempt to prove otherwise.

All because we seem to be able to only see with these eyes this brand of life that’s so often so bad that we need to do whatever we can within every single day to keep away those feelings of despair, of danger, of disappointment, of disagreement, and, yes, of desperation.

Because those feelings suck. They’re among the truest forms of misery ever made reality. They are without question, to us at least, some of the vilest inventions ever intended to come along always to leave a life totally upended. It’s unfair. It’s scary. It’s hard. It’s hairy. It’s big and mean and nasty. It’s everything the Grinch is said to be plus a few more miseries.

But again, what if we need such monsters as desperation and despair to inspire us to move on from here?

From where?

Literally wherever we are!

Because one of the saddest facts of this life we’ve known is that we’ve none of us known ever that way of life that we were created to live. Rather we’ve all of us known only that life both we set out to design inside this ideal that is “our way” that, oddly enough, has never even proven all that willing to oblige. For truly, are there any among us who can say without doubt or dread that their entire lives have known nothing of bad?

Have any of us ever managed to never lose sleep thanks to dreams that never came true?

Have any of us ever managed to make it through every day and night of all this life without nightmares coming true instead?

Friends, it’s okay for this life to be bad, to get hard, to be impossible for us to carry and thus us feel as if it’s impossible for us to carry on. In fact, I’m pretty much convinced that we need this life to feel that way.

Why?

Because, again, if it didn’t then we’d stay.

We’d do never anything new. We would never once ask any more from ourselves than our laziness was willing to give. We’ve proven time and again, and then time again, that we’re so thin in the discipline and determination and devotion department that, odds are, we’d probably do the same again.

Because we’re a people so very afraid of change that we’ve thus become unwilling to improve, perhaps even utterly convinced that we never could.

Is that because our lives are good or we at living them? No. It’s simply because we seem to know the difficulties to be proven in our daringly doing anything different. Because learning is hard. Trying is scary as it brings with it the risk of failing. Getting stronger only happens when we at first realize how weak we are, and that either physically or mentally or emotionally or, and most importantly of all, spiritually.

Indeed, we’ve become a people entirely unwilling to risk being moved from this version of life we’ve settled for.

Thankfully such feelings as desperation still offer to come along, usually out of nowhere, to, let’s just say ‘lovingly encourage us to move’.

Sounds a little better than saying it’s God’s way of yanking us out of our chosen pits of self-love and self-pity and whatever other selfishness we’ve settled for, and once up again kicking us in the behind so as to inspire us again to try and find that better life that He created us to live long before we chose instead this one that we don’t really even like all that much.

Simply because of the fear and desperation and stuff.

My point being that He allows us to hit rock bottom so very hard that we find that we feel this sense of desperation so deep once down so low that we almost bounce. Kind of like that Bumble dude on Rudolph in that we both sink, as is proven perfectly in our sin and the depths we’ve gone to live within and that, again, we all seem of this brazen ability to in fact sink so low, and that perhaps so fast, that we literally almost bounce off of rock bottom as we find there nothing we want nor wish to remain.

Which is the point of the whole thing.

Desperation is this dire discovery that where we are, who we are, whatever it is that we’ve become is nothing at all we want for anything to be. We become desperate, willing to do literally anything we have to just to get away from the situation we’re in. It’s like those stories of guys out camping or hunting or something and they hear a noise in the woods and, assuming it’s the Yeti, they suddenly find themselves so terrified that they run for their lives.

Indeed, desperation is there to inspire us to run for our lives as we finally find that our lives aren’t what they ought to be as within them we ought not to see, hear, feel whatever it is that we do.

Maybe it’s loneliness that inspires us to start taking better care of ourselves so as to maybe find ourselves more appealing to potential dates. Maybe it’s illness that inspires us to change our diet or move to a different part of the country that’s more conducive to our personal respiratory needs. Or maybe it’s our getting so tired of feeling so weak, so lazy, so helpless that we finally determine to help ourselves and hit the gym and start getting stronger.

Maybe it’s shame having called our name so many times that we’re finally just desperate enough to find our way down to our knees where we finally ask, with every possible pretty please, for God to help us stop doing all those things that bring us down so low and leave us feeling so broke.

Whatever the case may be, I’m convinced that desperation we need.

Why?

Because no, this life doesn’t go our way and neither have we ever really seemed as if we ever really cared to try it His either.

And that needs to change.

Thankfully He sends us things that do wear us down, make us scared, leave us scarred even. All because He knows that such things as pain and worry and fear and exhaustion can inspire us to change far quicker than any amount of ease or comfort can.

It’s all to lead us to our breaking point because, well, that’s where we finally break down and start looking for the help we need.

A help only He can offer.

And while it may feel at first that all those fears and failures we find and feel only seem as if proof that He’s forgotten us or is rightly furious with us, perhaps they’re only evidence that He’s been trying to get through to us so as to help us lose this strange willingness to stay put in places and as people we shouldn’t be so willing to remain.

So let desperation do its thing. For while it might not be fun and definitely doesn’t feel good, it’s there to help us finally seek for something better.

And well, truth is that just about anything is better than whatever it is that we’ve, in our sins, become.

Thankfully He won’t leave us there. Just seems we sometimes need a little, again, ‘loving encouragement’ to encourage us to move on.

And desperation offers that like nothing else can.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold