Grumble Your Hallelujahs

• 

In her new book Grumble Hallelujah: Learning to Love Your Life Even When It Lets You Down, Caryn Rivadeneira talks about her kitchen floor moment, that day she ended up sobbing in the kitchen, hating her life.  Have you ever had one of those moments?  Mine usually come in the bathroom (my only place of semi-solitude), but I am actually an equal opportunity grumbler.  Kitchen floor, living room couch, my own bed--really, they are all good places for grumbling breakdowns.

But, how do we get here?  How do we go from confident, productive members of society to the kitchen floor (insert your breakdown spot here)?

For me, it was a combination of broken dreams, multiple disappointments, and three cute, but very loud, children.  And the breakdowns themselves didn't help much.  This is America, right?  I'm smart, educated, generally regarded as capable.  Why aren't the bootstraps pulling me up?  And why didn't this period ever end?  Why did I continue to find myself on the kitchen floor?  Didn't God want me to be influential?  To shine His glory?

I'm beginning to realize that this is one of the places I so often got lost.  When I watched the women I admired, I just saw confident, articulate women that loved Jesus.  Surely, I figured, they got there without any real suffering, right?  How can you have such confidence if you've ever been brought low?

I discovered I was skimming the verses about God being strong when we are weak.  Have you ever skimmed those, too?  Here they are:

Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.           2 Corinthians 12:10

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the strong.  1 Corinthians 1:27

When I read these verses in college, I secretly worried.  In my context, I was pretty wise, pretty strong.  I didn't deal much with weakness, insults, distress, persecutions, or real difficulties.  Was the Bible not talking to me after all?

I needn't have worried.  In the last seven years, God has more than shown me my weaknesses.  He's more than brought me low and taught me the painful lessons of the disappointed life.  I've wasted even more time being depressed by that.

But God disciplines those he loves.  So, it could certainly be worse.

It's a work in progress, but I'm learning to grumble my hallelujahs.  I'm beginning to believe that God gets glory, even in the grumbles.

Have you ever felt any of this or am I just crazy?  How did you respond to your "kitchen floor" moment?

*Grumble Hallelujah: Learning to Love Your Life Even When It Lets You Down is an amazing book.  I can't recommend it enough for the resolution it is helping me find to my grumbling.  Caryn has graciously agreed to join us for a Q&A, so stay tuned for that!