Endure Differently

God just won’t let me get out of Psalm 91- and I kind of both love and hate it! After an extremely hard week with my daughters PANDAS symptoms, I found myself crying on the way home from drop off. Not just a few tears but big, ugly, snotty tears. I’m sure other drivers were concerned, but I couldn’t hold it back anymore.

I told God “I feel like I don’t have the strength to endure anymore. It’s too much for me to bear.” I don’t hide anything from him because he knows it all anyway. And as the tears flowed I heard the phrase “endure differently.” Which I of course kind of scoffed at in my grumpiness and pain.

But then I remembered what I had read in the footnotes of my Psalm 91 reading on vs 1: “hidden means to endure through the night in the safety of his arms.” It’s not in the fighting or the butt kicking warfare or the prayers that worked last time. It is staying smuggled into his armpit where he has exactly ZERO chances of dropping you, forgetting you or leaving you behind!

What enabled you to endure in the last season may not be what you need to endure in this season. When we have to walk through hard things, it’s normal to want to pull on strengths from the last season, but we need to redefine what endurance means for the season we are in.

For example, enduring in childbirth requires physical, emotional and spiritual preparation and support, but once you’re done giving birth, you need to endure postpartum and all the different stages of motherhood. Each season is going to require different “nourishment.”

Sometimes we get frustrated with seasons that never seem to end because it feels like pointless suffering. Sometimes we add to our suffering by trying to use the wrong tools to get through the current difficulty. We wonder why the prayers we prayed for deliverance and breakthrough worked then, but aren’t doing a darn thing now.

But God is relational - not transactional. He wants to know us and be known by him even in difficulty. I believe the key to endurance in this season is actually found in Psalm 91, in staying smuggled in the secret place with Him. It is knowing his safety and protection. The word “hidden” in verse 1 actually means “to endure through the night.” That means that even in extreme difficulty, when we stay in the safety of his armpit, we will endure through the night.

What does enduring differently mean to you in this season?

How can we redefine endurance to include nurturing and support along the way?

Let me know in the comments!

Andrea Jones