It Is Good

If I’ve written at all over the last few years, my words have often been heavy with lament.

I’ve recounted the life lessons and hard blows these years have dealt. From the early years of motherhood to lessons learned in relationships, life has not been light on learning opportunities.

In these years of learning, I’ve often felt the weight of my own failures and inadequacies. “If only I could be a better mom.” “If only I’d been a better friend.”

“If only…” these words keep me awake at night, ever reminding of all I’ve done wrong. Every time I get my footing, life washes me out to sea again. “You’re not enough.” “It’s your fault,” my brain screams relentlessly.

This last year nearly pulled me under.

But then, in the darkest hour just before the dawn, I heard words I never expected to hear. The words,

"You did this...and it's good." 

God has not felt like my friend for a really long time. Ever since I became a mom, I’ve felt like I’m locked head-to-head in battle with God. That wrestling culminated this past summer in a moment of absolute brokenness and surrender. I quit wrestling with God and asked him to please take all the things I’m holding and do something with them instead.

I thought God had won.

I guess, I thought that was the point all along. But that’s exactly when his gentleness and comfort began to wash over me instead. That’s when I began to hear the words, “you did this…and it’s good.”

Instead of feeling as though I were locked head-to-head with God, I began to feel him beside me, his arm around my shoulder… looking at what I was looking at and simply saying, “you did this…and it’s good.” I don’t mean that I physically felt or audibly heard him. But I knew his presence. I felt his approval and delight.

I’d walk through the house we’ve worked so hard to rebuild these last nine years, and I’d hear, “You did this…and it’s good.”

I’d put a hot meal on the table for my family and hear, “You did this…and it’s good.”

In the Genesis 1 account of God creating the world, we see a pattern in God’s creative work. First, God makes something. Second, God says, “it is good.”

For example:

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.”

Genesis 1:3-4 (ESV)

It’s as if God creates something, steps back with his arms crossed to observe, and says with pleasure, “It’s good, I like it.”

I never thought to see my own life in that same pattern.

Instead, I learned to zero in on all I do wrong, assuming God stands beside me with his arms crossed in displeasure.

And of course, my sin does grieve him. But not all is sin and failing — he delights in me too. He stands beside me, not with arms crossed in anger, but as he did in creation, observing with delight and often saying, “it is good.”

I don’t know what the year ahead holds.

The last two years have been a tempest. But I’m thankful to stand at the gates of a new year with the knowledge in my heart that God stands beside me with pleasure. He sees all that’s done by his grace and enabling and says, “it is good.”

“This I know, that God is for me.”

Psalm 56:9