Blogs,  Jenni Mickelson

Where We’re Going

Where am I going, Lord?

How many times have I asked you that question? You must be getting pretty sick of me by now, asking that question over and over again…

I like to say that I’m trying, Lord. I’m trying to make my way. I’m trying to make sense of things. But sometimes it seems like my efforts are not enough. I mess up. I see the world around me and I am dejected. I feel like I’m back to where I started — set to repeat the same cycle tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day…

I know I shouldn’t, Lord. You have given me too much good in my life to do it. But…

It’s encroaching on me once more: the tidal wave of self-pity. It washes over me and I find myself sinking.

The world around me gets darker and darker. Hopelessness and worthlessness press against my body fiercely as I descend farther and farther into the depths of my emotional sea.

As I am sucked down. I look up to where I came from. Far above me, above the surface of the sea — there they are. I see the stars, their light piercing the dark expanse in which they shine and the black abyss into which I am drowning. In that moment I flail my arms around in the water in a panic, kicking my feet around in all directions, all in the vain effort to rise out of the sea and into the realm of the stars.

I see the stars and sense a longing deep inside of me that I cannot explain. All I know is that I want to be there — to fly free, without hindrance, in the presence of their magnificence, their might, their mysteries.

It is a dream too awesome for me to imagine, a destination too amazing to contemplate, a reality so far beyond that of my own. A terrestrial being drowning in her own sin should be obsolete to the One who created the extraterrestrial masterpiece of the heavens.

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”

Psalm 8:3-4

I look around me in despair. What have I done? I ask myself, desperate for a way out as I see where I am. Forgive me! Help me!

Before I can register what is happening, I feel myself being pulled out of the water and set on something dry. Land. Solid ground. I am alive.

How can this be? I ask myself. But a voice inside of me tells me I already know. I know Who pulled me out of my sinful nature’s murky sea — again. Who time and time again sets me back on His solid foundation (1 Corinthians 3:11). Who day after day puts me back on the road that, though littered with questions and sorrows, is leading me into the realm of His eternal light — where, one day, I shall be forever free in the glory of His presence.

Maybe I can’t see how things will look tomorrow. Next week. Next year. In twenty years…

Where am I going, Lord?

But then, I look up. I see the stars.

I’m going home. 

“…I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me…I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 3:12b, 14

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