Feeling overwhelmed

2 weeks until all class stuff is over, 30 days until a break from work/research, 33 days until my family arrives, and 40 days until I get married. I have so much to do, even without good distractions like Josh and church, and my distractable, rebellious flesh is not helpful at this time either.

Also lately my heart seems simply unresponsive, cool and hard, during worship. I need to delight in God like I would a spring in the desert, but I can't seem to find it. Perhaps I am emotionally drained, perhaps I am self-sufficient and proud, perhaps I have forgotten the sweetness of repentance.

I know I need God, I ask him to help me in the midst of this, I ask him to teach me repentance, dependency, affection, and awe. I try to find my comfort and strength in him. I don't quite feel his presence, but I know he hears me. Little by little, I'm getting by. At the end of every day, every week, I marvel that I'm still going. I can't take credit for this, he must have hidden me beneath the shelter of his wing.

I tend to avoid Psalms because I don't understand it, because it's poetry and emotion, not necessarily law or promises (e.g. when it says "he heals all your diseases," I don't take that as a promise that my Crohn's disease is going away any time soon). I also don't get all the war talk, as Josh says, I don't understand guys. But considering the the unresponsiveness of my heart, I realized I need to see what affection, awe, repentance and dependency look like, feel like, how they play out in the heart. So Psalms it is. I try to read one around lunch time most days, and this is the one that I read today:

Psalm 3

Save Me, O My God

A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.

O LORD, how many are my foes!
Many are rising against me;
many are saying of my soul,
there is no salvation for him in God.
Selah

But you, O LORD, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.
I cried aloud to the LORD,
and he answered me from his holy hill.
Selah

I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.
I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around.

Arise, O LORD!
Save me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
you break the teeth of the wicked.

Salvation belongs to the LORD;
your blessing be on your people!
Selah


So I don't have a son trying to kill me and take my throne, and thankfully, no one thinks my situation is inescapable (though it feels that way to me at times), and yet this psalm speaks exactly on how to deal with overwhelming circumstances.