How to Talk Back to Your Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Friday 26th October 2012

How to Talk Back to Your Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

She was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Come to think of it, we both were.

The day downright stunk. That’s what.

At night, we leaned back into her bed pillows, shoulder to shoulder in the purplish dimness of her lamplit room, both of us staring up at the ceiling.

Lydia rested her head back into her palms and let out her breath in one long exhale.

“Mom,” she sighed. “It went like this…”

She recalled her forgotten school snack, the mixed-up questions on her science quiz, the angry stack of homework on the kitchen table. She was worn out, stressed out, bummed out and burned out. Not to mention the fact that P.E. was super-boring.

Sometimes, life in the fifth grade can be hard.

“I hear you,” I told her. “My day had rotten parts, too.” In my mind, I cataloged them:

I had nearly forgotten to submit midterm grades for my college journalism students. I slammed into a deer with my Acadia. And I allowed myself to listen to hoarse whispers of the enemy.

While I was working on my book manuscript, the enemy had uttered just one question, “What will people think of you?” Sometimes, that’s all the enemy has to say, and within seconds, my old nature runs away with it, doing the rest of the work. I second-guessed whole chapters, feeling a sick, knotted feeling in my stomach. I doubted my writing ability. I pondered worst-case scenarios, imagining my heart sitting naked on Amazon.com, subjected to a star-rating system.

And then, I remembered: My God is bigger than all that. He is bigger than our fears, our darkest nights, our worst-case scenarios and our intimidating stacks of fifth-grade math. God is bigger than Amazon.

Our fears can’t be ignored; they have to be confronted, with words of life.

So, I spoke life into my heart. I talked back to my fear. I chewed fear out, that’s what. I told it, out loud, that it had no business here. And then I put fear in the time-out corner, asking the good Lord to stand guard.

And then I waited for the promise of tomorrow, of God’s new mercies, coming on the dawn.

In the bedroom, I told Lydia about Lamentations 3:22-23.

“In the Bible, it says that God’s mercies are new every morning.”

“What does that mean?” Lydia asked.

“It means that God has a fresh batch of love waiting for us on the other side of this night, Lydia. God is giving us a do-over, a chance to try again. Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow came. Sure enough, the sun rose. In the stink of our week, Jesus made tiny miracles. Lydia had a great day, and mine wasn’t half-bad either. I snatched back my heart from the bony fingers of fear. I gave it another time-out. And God stood guard, over my heart.

And I know, it doesn’t mean the sun will shine tomorrow, or that all my anxieties will magically disappear forever. Life will continue to deliver hard-knocks, and heartaches and the heaviness of our humanity. But I know what to do to get through: I speak life.

Last night, on the way home from piano lessons, the girls asked me to play one song over and over again: “Speak Life,” by TobyMac. We cranked it.

And at bedtime, when I tucked Lydia in, as we reclined back on her pillows again in that purple-lit room, she said her favorite part of the song was this: “Mountains crumble with every syllable.”

“It’s like, with one word, you can change everything,” she said.

Yes, Lydia, we can change everything with one word. We can “speak life” to our deadest, darkness nights. We can speak life into the hearts of hurting friends. And we can speak life into the no good, horrible, very bad days.

And life is spelled like this: C-H-R-I-S-T.

{The song that we’re singing here on the Lee farm this week ….}