Think On It Thursday

Lullaby for the Weary

I felt terribly weak today.  Physically, I was recovering from an illness that had bombarded our entire family and rendered me feeble and nearly unable to eat for 36 hours.  Still depleted of energy, I was useless as a mom and couldn’t pull together enough strength to venture to the store for the groceries or, what’s more, an anniversary card for my sweet husband tomorrow—our 9th.  Mentally, I was in a fog as thick as the mornings of my childhood in San Francisco.  Emotionally, I was all over the map, coping with a tender wound that found its sting again, and confronting my worst fears on the phone with a relative, asking her to be the godparent to our children as we draw up a revised will.  All this, and it’s the dead of winter.  Bleak and bleary.


I needed a hot bath to think and pray.  And as I soaked in the bubbles, one word surfaced in my mind to perfectly encapsulate the crux of how I felt: fragile.  On the brink of shattering to bits.  And as I cried into the bubbles and asked God for restorative strength, my Ipod switched to a song from across the bathroom that I suspected He’d meant just for me, in that very moment:


When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;
When troubles come and my heart burdened be;
Then I am still and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit awhile with me.


You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up... To more than I can be.
(You Raise Me Up; Josh Groban)


But that’s not all.  I soon found out that this song was meant for someone else tonight, too.


Just as I was typing this up from my cozy bed, pondering the irony of being on deadline to write this devotion, dedicated to strength, on one of my weakest days, a little girl came peeking into my room.  Fragile.  My five-year-old had been having trouble sleeping in her new bed, the one we gave her days ago, for Christmas.  She said she’d had a nightmare.  There was a monster in it. 


How God orchestrates these beautiful moments, I’ll never know.  But Holy Spirit told me I would be sitting awhile with my precious Lorelei, singing her to sleep tonight with Spirit’s sweet lullaby to us both.


When troubles come and my heart burdened be;
Then I am still and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit awhile with me…
You raise me up... To more than I can be.


Now she sleeps.  And somehow, I am strong again.


2 Corinthians 12:9 And he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.”


Daniel 10:19 "Do not be afraid, O man highly esteemed," he said. "Peace! Be strong now; be strong." When he spoke to me, I was strengthened and said, "Speak, my lord, since you have given me strength."


Ephesians 3:14-21 For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.


~Wendy Connelly