Advocacy

This morning as I rebound from yesterday’s disappointing news from the doctor’s office, I wonder how to write about things beyond understanding that are still so very real…like discouragement, or encouragement, or hope…or advocacy. In my opinion, we all need someone to care about our individual journeys, especially when traveling the rough terrain. I know I like someone to be there with a loyal pat-on-the-back (“How are you doing?”) even if he/she can’t begin to understand the intricacies of my unique passage through my specific moon-craters (sufferings, trials).

At the moment I’m very conscious of bellows (circumstantial squeezing) that pump when whatever is happening around me seems out-of-control. The suck-in phase (suck-it-up) promotes a sort of hyperventilation, a dizzying, head-spinning vertigo of the soul. Most of us are good at sucking-it-up; we’ve been well coached by mentors adept in the skill who have been refined by culture’s situational ethics. However, the blow-out phase (blow-off) acts like a purge for that hold-your-breath mask of mock adequacy and false security. An advocate is very helpful in receiving the stale blow-off air that must eventually come out (or else we implode).

The Lord Jesus is my ultimate advocate, promising shelter beneath His protective wing during fall-out, and guidance through the jungles. But how critical to remember that we are His protégés, serving each other (and thus Him) when the tide flows out, when winter frost climbs up the windows of the soul, when dark valleys seem never ending…and when the threshing machine of our Western medical culture (which I call “the system”) corners and growls with grizzly insistence; tearing, chewing, and devouring personal ethics in the name of something called science.

Victimization has a way of clawing at the most tender parts of my heart. May today be a day of healing: of rejoicing in His sovereignty, trusting His advocacy, and resting in His grace.

“Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high.
My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God.” Job 16:19-20