Saddle the Moose

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Ps 37:4)

In my old Bible, the one with the spine taped up and dated notes written in it from past years, I have a note beside Psalm 37:4. I didn’t date this one, but it must have been written before 2001, when my father died after a 21-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

There was a time when I thought the desire of my heart was for dad to die and be released from that prison – because Alzheimer’s, people. It’s horrible. But when I wrote this note by this verse, God had just revealed something to me. “My true desire,” I wrote, “is that the family will be relieved of the burdens – and God can do that with dad alive, and probably more to His glory.”

I don’t know about any of the rest of the family’s experiences, but I know there was healing that happened in my heart during those last years of his illness that might not have happened had he been killed in a car crash or something. And whether I was aware of it or not, that healing was probably the desire of my heart . . . and my dad's. And certainly God's. 

My Jordan Raynor devotional book reminded me recently that God only gives good gifts. “Because God is the author of good, he alone gets to decide what is good for us and what is not.” I remember becoming quite conscious of this truth during every change of employment my ex dealt with. We could pray all we wanted for one particular job to come through . . . but in the end, we knew that God knew better than we did what job and city would be the best situation for us. 

We're incredibly arrogant sometimes, assuming we know what's good. We need to let God pick the job – and the time of death – or means of healing – and everything else.

My youngest had a dramatic healing of her crippling OCD at one point during her senior year. It was amazing, and we praised God for it . . . but the OCD came back. That could have discouraged us greatly. But the thing is, we now know God is quite capable of taking that malady away in a moment’s notice whenever he chooses to do so. But he isn’t choosing to do so. So, there must be a reason he wants it to stay for a while.

Another recent Raynor devotion (y’all, this is a good book – get it here if you’re curious) referred to the story of Gideon. God kept whittling his army down to a small remnant so that when the battle was won, it would be indisputably God’s doing, not the Israelites’. “We tend to view constraints as a curse,” says Jordan. “But God views them as a blessing. Why? Because constraints force us to do our work with God rather than simply for him.”

And sometimes, those “constraints” are the means God uses to get the job done. I’ve become obsessed lately with the old TV show Monk. There’s an episode where Adrian tries some medication to alleviate his fears and compulsions. And the meds work . . . but losing the compulsions also meant losing the focus he needed for his detective work. So maybe those constraints of his were actually a good gift from God?

When my daughter first saw a therapist, she was given a bunch of small figurines and asked to create a picture that represented her OCD. She put herself on one side of a bridge with a giant moose standing in the middle, preventing her from crossing. They apparently spent much of that first session talking about “killing the moose.” I told her that my hope was not necessarily for her to kill the thing.

I wanted her to saddle that moose and make it carry her across.

I’ve got “mooses” in my life, staring me down in the middle of the bridge, blocking my way. I bet you do, too. Weaknesses. Illnesses. Losses. Lacks. Burdens. Wounds. Sure, let’s pray for release from those things – sometimes God is just waiting for us to ask.

But sometimes, the moose is a good gift from God, meant to be saddled and ridden like a workhorse. Use that beast . . . and let God get the glory from it.