The Season of Need

This has been a hard week.
To be honest, it's been a hard month.
Well, in full disclosure, it's been a bit of a hard year.
But let's zero in on this week.

My girls have had the flu.
The nasty, messy, violent version of the flu.  They have been sicker than I have ever seen them and it's awful as a mom to feel powerless to help.
I can rub their backs, hold back their hair, sing them songs and read their favorite books, let them watch endless hours of Disney movies, bring them Jell-O and crackers and ginger ale...but I can't make the flu go away.
That will pass in it's own time.
So, in the meantime, my girls are stir-crazy and very needy.

Historically speaking, I'm great with needy people.  I'm your girl if you need a friend to show up, have that conversation, let you cry (and probably cry with you), sit with you in the uncomfortable places...I can do that role.

This role, though? The role of "needy lady in Seattle"?

I don't know how to do it.

I didn't realize I had fully inhabited this role until it came to my attention at co-op.
Every Monday, we go to a church and do classes with other homeschooling families.
Here, I experienced a couple of said Mondays drenched in tears. Since then, the core group of moms have made a point of sitting with me at lunch.
I find this so amazingly sweet and so horrifically mortifying.

I'm "THAT" girl.

I mentioned this to my mom and she said, "Honey, you are in a season.  Accept all the help you can get and be okay with it.  I know it's awkward being on the receiving end, but women understand seasons.  They won't think you just LIVE in a season of need."

I so hope she's right.
(She usually is.)

It's not lost on me that the week I'm coming to terms with being in a season of need is Holy Week.
I have felt God asking me to lean into this needy season and believe that it will pass in it's own time.

Like the flu?!?!

I DON'T WANT THE FLU!!!
I DON'T WANT TO BE NEEDY!!
I DON'T WANT THIS WHATEVER- IT- IS- THAT- DESCENDED-ON-ME- WHEN- I- REALIZED- FORTY- WAS- HAPPENING!

Ready or not, here it came.

And that's why Jesus came.

Not because I turned forty, but because we are needy.
We are so broken and needy that it is embarrassing.
Look at the news.
For the love, there was a recent documentary titled "Seattle is Dying" and Notre Dame burned down.
Laws have been passed making it okay to not help a dying baby.
Not to mention the sad, scary, unthinkable things happening to some babies IN the womb.

We are the dirty, messy, violent kind of broken.
We don't want to be, but here we are.

So Jesus came.

He knew what was coming, told the angels to stand back and let it happen and "made Himself nothing, taking on the very nature of the servant, being made in human likeness." (Phil. 2:5-8)

He chose to be human.
He took on our feelings and desires and emotions and aching bodies and  messiness and sickness and betrayal and, at the end, He took on our sin.
All of it.
He entered into OUR season of need and emerged victorious.
He looked it in the face and surrendered to that season...but first,
He had HIS season of need.

"WOULD YOU TAKE THIS CUP AWAY FROM ME??
I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS!!
THIS SORROW IS CRUSHING MY LIFE OUT!! (Matt. 26:38, Msg.)
CAN YOU GET ME OUT OF THIS???"

And after emptying all those honest feeling to God, he followed it up with,
"Please, not what I want.  What do you want?" (Mark 14:36)

Then He prayed this same prayer multiple times, again and again.
Over and over, the same request; the same anguish.

It was His season of need.

This is my Jesus.
A God who emerges victorious, but before all that was betrayed and fell into despair begging God to make it all go away.

Also, the fact that He was alone.
All his friends fell asleep while He was crying out to God to change His destiny, stressing out so badly that he sweat blood while they were sleeping.

I can't even.

But God sent an angel to comfort him and strengthen him so he wouldn't be alone.
Isn't that the most beautiful thing?
That God doesn't just leave us hanging?
He provides sources of comfort and strength.
It may be the Bible or chocolate or a phone call from an old friend or a text saying someone is thinking of you...
or it may be someone sitting with you at lunch, understanding that seasons change and just because you are in one doesn't mean it defines you.

Sometimes it looks like that.

So, as we walk toward the cross this week and beyond it, the empty tomb, let's remember that all of this happened after an immense season of need...followed by an immense season of victory.


"It is in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for." (Eph. 1:11)

May it be so.