Tantrum

Today I had a tantrum. It lasted maybe an hour and came complete with tears and a tirade. I basically told God I was angry with Him for withholding something that I was sure was in my best interest.

It's now 12:30 AM, about seven hours post-rant, and He is still choosing to remain mum on the subject.

I told Him I thought He was being unfair and unkind to me.

He didn't answer.

I declared that He was being mean in His method of handling (or rather, not handling) my request. I added that His strategy of dangling a carrot and then yanking it back (or so it appears to me, with my "see through a glass darkly" vision) is getting old. I told Him I had been down this road before with Him, and would prefer He come up with a different game plan.

Silence.

In desperation I called a friend, the same friend to whom I had confided my prayer request over the weekend. She calmly repeated her counsel from the other day, which in a nutshell is that God can't be confined to a timetable, and I needed to be patient and let Him work out His plan His own way.

I cried some more. I told her the ways in which God wasn't playing fair and how sorry I felt for myself. She reminded me that I've been inventorying my life in some areas, and that it made sense that some emotional "stuff" was "getting stirred up" as a result of that work.

I told her I had to go to work and didn't see how I could put on a happy face for my employer with eye shadow running all down my cheeks. She suggested doing some kind of rote activity like cleaning out my glove compartment before putting one foot in front of the other and showing up.

I took her advice and even managed to make small talk along with getting my job done (if my boss noticed my swollen eyes, she didn't mention it).

I'm not sure, but I think I sense the tiniest hint of a muscle developing somewhere inside of me. Not a bicep or a quad, but a waiting-induced, post-trauma (no, make that post-drama), labor-driven, nothing-left-to-do-but-hang-in-there bit of brawn. Not much to speak of, but something to build on.

Oh, and proving that God sometimes disguises Himself as His people, my dear friend called back to check on me later in the evening.

"Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37:4

"No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly." Psalm 84:11