Overtaken

I'm waiting to be overtaken. 

I yearn for it. I pray for it. 

"They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will be their crown; Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away." Isaiah 35:10

You and I are fellow sojourners in this broken world full of pain, suffering, and sorrow. Oh, the sorrow and the sighing! I never realized how sorrow and sighing go hand in hand. Not long ago my husband told me, "I just find myself sighing deeply and loudly throughout the day." As I read this portion in Isaiah our conversation came back to mind. Sighing is our bodies’ attempt to exhale the sorrow- a futile attempt. The sorrow seeks release one way or another. Tears and sighs are external responses beyond the body's control to an internal grief and heavy sorrow. 

I'm sighing in this land of sorrow as I desperately gaze into the land of everlasting joy and singing. That’s where I want to be. Joy seems to seep out in the form of singing, an outward expression of something the body cannot keep contained. Just as sorrow must be released and shared, so must joy. 

I'm yearning for the day where joy crowns my head and gladness runs over my eyes and down my cheeks taking the place of sorrow's tears. There was a day a crown of pain sat upon my Jesus' head and drops of blood fell into his eyes mixing with tears. Through those bloody tears dripping from his cheeks and nose he made a way for this crown of joy to one day be placed upon his children, upon us. 

My sorrow, my sadness, and my sighing may seem unending but they are not everlasting. I need reminding of this. May the whispers of the crown to come sing louder than the sighing sorrow. I sit here eagerly and impatiently awaiting, pleading actually, to be overtaken. Oh, what blessed relief that offers me. Yet some days it seems like the carrot dangling just beyond my reach. It's so close but my fingers can only graze it. I can smell it. I can see it. I can even nearly taste it. Then every sorrow's sigh seems to blow it a little further beyond my grasp. 

I know his promises are true and one day this sorrowful sighing will take its final exhale. Abigail's has. She is singing the song of gladness and I can just imagine her dancing in the breeze of Heaven's breath with a crown of joy and gladness so generous in size it's slipping down into her bright laughing eyes. She has been overtaken; not by death, but by his gladness and joy. In my darkest days of sorrow's heavy sighs I beg the Lord to bring this image to mind reminding me of his promise. 

I'm waiting to be overtaken.