How Long, O Lord?

Do you have these things in your life that just seem to follow you around, no matter where you are or what you do? You just can't seem to get away from them. 

We think that changing our circumstances will get us away from them, but here they are again anyway. We think that having a really good season gets us away from the bad stuff that haunts us, but it seems to follow us anyway. There doesn't seem to be a day, doesn't seem to be a breath, without this stuff hanging over us like a thick, dark cloud - always threatening to rain, even on the days when it doesn't. In fact, that cloud seems to be all the darker on the brighter days. 

Maybe it's the contrast. I don't know. 

I have these things in my life. I have these things that just chase me around and seem bent on ruining whatever good thing I have going for me. Even if they don't ruin the actual thing itself - even if they don't run me wholly into the ground the way they so often seek to - they still ruin my ability to enjoy my good seasons.

I go home at night and wrestle with these things. Knowing, knowing, they are there. Knowing they're trying. Knowing I'm wrestling against them, even if I also know that it's not going to rain today. At least, I'm fairly sure that it's not going to rain today. 

But they're heavy anyway. The threat looms large. The history that I have with my things, knowing what they've done to me in the past, hangs like dead weight around my shoulders, pulling my head down. I find myself just wanting to scream, How many more times do you get to destroy my life? How many more good things, good days, good breaths do you get to take from me?

Sometimes, I do. 

And listen, I'm not talking about "big, bad things." I'm not talking about the stuff we always think we're talking about when we talk about stuff like this, although those things qualify, too. I don't have a bunch of big, dark secrets hiding in my closet. I don't have some heinous double life where I've been hiding the "real" me from everyone. I don't have some massive thing going on that would shock you if you heard about it. 

I've got human things. The byproducts of living in a broken flesh in a fallen world. The years of accumulated baggage that I've picked up from the baggage that others have thrown into my existence. The baggage I've added to my own shoulders by the way I've responded. The wrestling of the flesh that comes with not absolutely loving everything about the unique way that God has created me - complicated, of course, by others who also have not loved everything about the unique way that God has created me and who have not been polite about it.

Human things. The same kinds of things we're all wrestling with, our own versions of them. And yet, that familiar heavy weight that makes me just want to scream - how much longer? how much more? how many more times, more days, more breaths? 

How long, O Lord?