My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
(Psalm73:26)

This day was hard, emotion-wise. Everything may have gone smoothly and on schedule, but my heart was stuck on the breakup once again. It felt fresh again, and for once, I was glad for the traffic jam that let me have a lot of time to cry and pour out my heart to God.

I complained and whined. I asked God why do I have to be the strong girl– a complaint that I’ve had most of my life. Why can’t I just be the regular girl who can cry and be weak and heartbroken? Then I was interrupted with the thought, “Who say’s you’re the one who’s strong anyway?” And who says I don’t cry and I’m not weak? Ok, so I may not be heartbroken, but why do I keep on acting like I am? And that shut me up for a beat. I stopped complaining for a while and took out my Bible (yes, the traffic jam was that bad). Turns out, Psalm 73:26 was part of my Bible reading that day. Touche, God. Well, of course I knew all along that it’s not really my strength, but God, I’m so tired.

I wonder if Moses ever thought of making his friends put his arms down because they were already asleep during the battle of Rephidim.

Thinking about it now, that day was a like a battle for me. And God sent unlikely (well, not really that unlikely) friends to hold me up. M, my unofficial cheerleader, just kept on assuring me that I was awesome– and if he weren’t gay, he would totally hit on me (haha!). And J, my chocolate bear– who knew what it’s like to feel one thing despite knowing what is right, and has lived with that struggle all his life with no end in sight– just kept on telling me to hang on and move forward in faith and hope. For what else can we do, when things are beyond our control?

At the end of the day, I found myself talking to another friend in her room while she struggled to hold herself together under the pressure of everything that she had to finish at work and at church. We shared our struggles and gave each other encouragement. And I prayed for her– something we both needed. She needed it because she was so stressed and lonely, and I needed to get out of my head and share the strength that I had been given to help out a sister.

Thank God for friends, Christian or not, God uses them just the same to comfort and to teach lessons that should have been learned several times before.

For some reason, I really thought that life would get easier during the 60-60 Experiment but then again, if my desire is to grow even closer to God and go farther with Him in our journey, that’s not exactly going to happen all the time, right? If I want to see His strength, He would have to expose my weaknesses. If I want to be healed, I have to show Him all my wounds. If I want to minister, I would do it with all transparency, because I’m a person saved and sustained by grace too. Kinda scary, right? But onward we go!