When you really are having your worst day ever...

No one warns which days will forever change our lives. No one wakes us that morning and says, “This day will require you have an unwavering trust in the sovereignty of God.” God doesn’t even do that.  I have spent the better part of a decade trying to live in this:  Wring every single drop of good, every single drop of love, every single drop of hope ought of each day.  Live every day as if it was your last.  This day, this moment is unrepeatable.  You can’t recover it like lost data on your hard drive, you can’t save it to a cloud, You can’t DVR it.  You can’t buy it on the clearance rack at Target and it certainly is not going to show up in your much loved, much frequented consignment, gently used, re-sale, vintage store.  Days are not vintage material. (Novel worthy maybe- vintage never).  

So, when he asked me in his broken, hushed voice, “What do you do if it is your worst day you have ever experienced?”  I will be honest I felt like vomiting, because really I didn’t have a good answer.  Truth be told, there are days that just are not worth repeating.  Truth be told there are days that we if could, we would demand a refund.  And had we known about the day BEFORE the day happened, we would have never gotten out of bed.  And truth be told, I have been asked that a lot…it came with my job.  It was tempting; particularly if I knew the theology of the person I was talking to, to offer up some very pat Christian answers.  It was tempting to walk away emotionally.  It was tempting to re-frame whatever the experience… in a message of hope.  But on that day…on that day…I said…

Truth be told I crumble.  I don’t do worst days well.  That is what I told him.  I told him I wish I had a bullet list of coping skills that would get him through what he had to face in the next hour, the next day, the few weeks he had left. I told him that to be honest I didn’t know how he would get through. I told him I thought it would hurt alot.  I told him he would probably be scared.  I told him that I really didn't know how, but I told him, the only way to get through the worst day and the one after that and the one after that…is to fall down.  I told him that the only way I knew to get through was to fall down.  I told him I was not one of those self help experts who say the only way through is through and that he would be stronger, and it would look better and there was a reason, etc…etc…I told him the only thing at the end of your worst day ever was quite simply grace and we have to fall down to reach it.  So when you have a day you can’t quite simply wring good out of, when you have a day that DOES NOT bear repeating, when you have a day you would rather forget…fall down.  There is no re-framing, no positive, no good ending for your worst day ever…there is only this…and this is all that remains of worst…is grace.  At the end of the fall there is always grace to catch you.