Giving Thanks Through the Tears

Posted on Mar 20, 2017 Topic :

When my (Cyndie’s) fifth-grade daughter, Zoe, began withering away before my eyes—losing 12 pounds, sleeping through the day, and enduring great pain in her “hip” (which later was found to be in her colon)—I read Psalm 42 and 43 over and over again. I remember growing up with a song based on Psalm 42:1: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.” But I didn’t know the agony that was attached to those words. As I waited day after day, week after week, and then month after month for my once-energetic child to be restored, healthy, and whole again, Psalm 42 resonated with me. If you read that chapter devoid of any personal heartache, it sounds a bit, well, disturbing. Back and forth the psalmist’s emotions go, from pain to remembering who God is and what He can do, then back to pain. Yet that’s exactly how I felt. I trusted God. I knew God had a bigger plan. But my heart ached.

I missed my once-active daughter, who had blossomed into such a responsible fifth grader. She used to help the kindergartners with reading, volunteer in the library, and was one of two girls in the whole school who had the honor of folding up the American flag after school each day. Now, Zoe, who always wanted to be out doing something active, couldn’t even handle being in the car because it nauseated her. She became a homebody seemingly overnight, and the medical answers came painfully slow. She looked so frail and gaunt and sickly, that when she went for her colonoscopy and endoscopy (which finally diagnosed the colitis) the receptionist assumed she was there to receive blood. And have you ever watched your child be wheeled away on a gurney? Ugh. Heartrending! And the waiting is agonizing. I understood Psalm 42, jostling from despair to hope and back again. See if you can relate.

Psalm 42

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?

My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,

“Where is your God?”

These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.

Why, my soul, are you downcast?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,
or I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.

By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God my Rock, “Why have you forgotten me?

Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?”

My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”

Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
or I will yet praise him,
My Savior and my God.

That last verse sums up how to have a thankful heart in the midst of pain and despair. Is your soul restless? Spend time meditating on that passage. “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” When you place your hope in God, you turn your eyes to the Lord. Praise and thanksgiving flow more naturally from a heart that’s set on the Lord.