I was wrecked today. It was one of those days where the stories that I am humbled to sit with collide with my own

A deep encounter

An intimacy forged

No words, just knowing.

Imperceptible words of the heart, I suppose, that speak louder than any audible noise.

I connected with the soul that sat across from me and knew at once that his journey and my journey were one. This road we all are called to navigate, the stories that God authors in our lives, the bond that we share with one another. These are the stories of God.

I felt this bond today.

Truth be told, I battle the inner voice in me that wants to see healing and restoration come in the lives of those I encounter. My inner fixer continually searching for that, which can bring hope, healing, and meaning to the pain that we experience.

It’s not that I don’t embrace her, my voice. She motivates me, drives me in what God has called me to. She’s the passion that powers me, the echo that tells me I am His. The healing, loving, enduring part of Him.

But, if left to her own devices she can take over, lose sight of the story that God is writing. She must be reigned in.

Back to that in a second…

I once heard a powerful word. It was said that there is one question asked of God by his children in His Word that exceeds all others. And one response from God to His children that does likewise.

When I heard this my inner voice resounded with a “of course, isn’t it obvious”, we ask God, “why?”. Why do we suffer, why so much pain, why are you silent? This is the core question of the human experience. Isn’t it?

And of God’s overwhelming response to those he calls his own? Another elementary question, my inner voice retorted, it has to be “I will work all things out for good”.

Two for two! Done. Next question.

Only, I couldn’t be more wrong. And more importantly in my wrongness (not sure that’s a word) I missed the heart of God, His story.

What I discovered reigned in my inner voice and revealed to me the One who authors my story, the stories of those I journey with.

I learned that the most asked question of those who journeyed with God so long ago was not why, but “How long”. And God’s most persistent answer to their question was not a nicely packaged answer that fits into a mold well meaning followers have created to understand this awe some God we follow. His overwhelming answer to the cries of his beloved is

“I Am with you”.

I Am with you

I Am with you

He is with us.

Our pain, our suffering, our joys, our desires, our longings, our hopes, our fears.

He is with us. I Am is with us. You. Me. He is with us.

We are not alone, although at times it feels as though we are. He is with us, in us, around us. He has never left.

I say this with a very deep understanding of the enormity of your “aloneness”. The enormity of the pain that you have and are experiencing. The pain that God has allowed, is allowing as your story continues to be written.

Yet,

His voice calls to me

“I Am with you.”

“How long I ask, How long must I endure”

“I Am with you”

You see when I am overwhelmed with the need to fix the pain that I encounter, the pain that lives in the echoes of my story, I am reminded that

my job is not to relieve the pain that I encounter rather to enter into it.

Much like God chose to do in becoming incarnate in human flesh and walk among us. Suffering with us, like us, rejoicing with us, crying with us, pleading with us, dying with us.

He chose to enter into our story and somehow in that to share in the journey so one day we would begin to understand that

“He is with us”

Not to relieve our pain, but to enter into it.

I sat across from a man today and we entered into one another’s pain. No words, no answers, just a deep knowing filled the room.

And in the sacredness of that moment, I experienced afresh the holiness of what it means to enter into someone’s story and felt a deep filling of God’s presence and wondered if this is what healing looks like.