Psalms 42:7 Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me.

I’m a little old school, so I’ve been hesitant to go all-in with Facebook and other social media “relationships”.  I define friends as people who I’ve met in person, and over time developed lots in common with via shared experiences. But it’s 2016. I am currently collaborating on a book with a woman I’ve never met! It’s a new and curious experience to encounter people online whose passions, experiences and mission align so strongly with my own.  I’m not sure of where she lives, no clue of her favorite food or TV show.  But nonetheless, I now count her, and several other FB strangers, among my friends.  

I recently submitted our diagnosis story for the new book she is writing, and she edited the heck out of it – LOL! Truly she’s a fantastic editor, I’d love to send her everything I write, but I feel that would wear the friendship thin pretty quickly.  Within her editing, however, she highlighted one sentence and commented: “I absolutely love this sentence!!!! Wow. Such a powerful thought, and worthy of a blog post all on its own.”

The timing of this comment is uncanny.  I have been studying a particular verse in the Bible for a few weeks.  It wouldn’t leave me and when that happens it’s usually because I’m going to write about it.  But I couldn’t find the tie-in to my blog theme of special needs parenting.  And there there it was!  This sentence written by me several years ago, that I dug up and submitted to her without even noticing it.  She highlighted and sent back to me and it explains the special mom’s heart so completely:  

The devastation in my heart mingled with the overwhelming flood of love and forceful protectiveness I felt as I looked at the precious baby in the seat next to me. One whom I always loved as special, was now defined by the word in an entirely different way.

 

Now to the verse that has been stuck in my mind.  It’s more of a tangled knot, really, because I was struggling to understand its application.  Psalm 42:7  was planted in my mind a few weeks ago because it’s used in my new favorite song, “Running After You” by Chris McClarney.  You really must buy it – best dollar you’ll spend this week (or just buy the whole album, because WOW.)  I say I was struggling with it, because I am a “put it in context” girl, so I started digging through the whole chapter and studying the various commentaries on David’s cry.  Bible scholars who’ve researched the chronology of this chapter in David’s life  have determined that his analogy is of deep anguish and sorrows, which seem to come rushing over him, with one calling out to the next.  The imagery of the deep heavy waters of a rushing river plunging unstoppable over a cliff into the deep pool below.  It sounds so hopeless, it didn’t quite match up with the context I’d heard it used in, and it seems almost unsettling.  

And then I read that sentence I wrote years ago.  How a deep devastation in my heart mingled with another flood (of love), and how the two together were the change agent in my life.  Sometimes those most profound and havoc wreaking forces are the things that accomplish the greatest change in our hearts.  Without a deep overwhelming flood, my heart would not be new.  I might feel different, make minor adjustments or head out in different directions, but a true, radical change is only accomplished when the old is completely washed away, under the flood of a waterfall so powerful and loud that it drowns out all else.  Earlier in the chapter David likens himself to a deer panting for water – he’s desperately thirsty for God, yet experiences a flood of a different sort.  God answers his thirst for more God, with a powerful rushing water of sorrow.  That doesn’t really make sense, until you know that within a flood of sorrows comes a new depth of receiving God’s love and mercy that was previously impossible.  So the deep wound brings the deep healing – the Healer.

You too, are my friend! I may have never met you, or you may be one of my true blue forever friends (like from real life).  Either way I appreciate you today. Thanks for your friendship. Thanks for reading. I pray that you recognize the rushing waters that have flooded your heart and mind as agents for change, and as the preparation for greater love, mercy and grace.  Have a great day!

Me & Nick at Niagara Falls