Radically Happy

MIC Check

Today’s Most Important Challenge is…

• Restoring the grace of grieving
• By facing my deepest pain
• So I can help others face theirs

Immanuel Approach Memo

Continued from Flooded

I am… diving.

Not in a good way

Underwater
The barracuda-self we are chasing
Can breathe easily

The dolphin-Jesus I am riding
Can hold his breath for over 10 minutes

Me
With my human body and hawk head
Won’t survive that long

Fine

I look to Jesus.

He told me to trust Him
He knows my limits
If I die, I die

Better to lose my life
Clinging to Jesus
Than lose Jesus
Clinging to a life
I will lose anyway

Jesus nudges me.

In the depths
Out of my despair
I realize what He is saying

I embrace Him
Placing my mouth over His blowhole
Inhaling as He exhales

It isn’t much
I feel the headache
Of oxygen deprivation
But it keeps my alive

Until…

Jesus rises.

I see a light above me
We breach the surface
Then we are leaping into the air

I fill my lungs
With heavy, humid breaths

Jesus flips me off
And I land gently on the shore
Of a placid blue hole
In the middle of a desert island

I lay there gasping
While Jesus cavorts in the pool
Laughing and grinning
Like He is inordinately pleased with Himself

I can’t imagine why
Until I see
What has happened
To the barracuda we were chasing

Then I forget to breathe!

To be continued

Reflection

I feel…

• Breathless
• Underwater
• Unbearable tension
• Excruciating pressure
• His glee
• Wholehearted surrender
• Joyful despair

Scripture

Leave Babylon, flee from the Babylonians! Announce this with shouts of joy and proclaim it. Send it out to the ends of the earth; say, “The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob.” They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock; he split the rock and water gushed out. “There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”‭‭

Isaiah‬ ‭48‬:‭20‬-‭22‬ ‭NIV‬‬