Day 29: Portion & Cup

I had a conversation with a friend this week about our portion and cup, but not so explicitly. That’d be strange.

It started with a simple question, “How are you?” and initially I got a simple answer. I think I gave a simple answer when she asked, too. But then we remembered who was on the other end of FaceTime, and we kept telling our kids five more minutes to answer the question in full.

There is the how of the moment. Quarantine for parents has freed up the evenings and filled the days. If there is quiet in the house, it has to be found at odd hours and in obscure corners. Schooling at home brings anxious questions of enough? and then there’s the question of what to do the rest of the time. My boys need to go outside, but today’s high is 45. It’s rainy. Outside will be a hard sell.

There is the how of our lives – the things my friend I have been talking around for the last 10 years. Some of it’s amazing; some of it’s debilitating. There is the fluctuating and the chronic. Over some of it, we have choice and over others … we deal.

That’s when the image came. The verse from Psalm 16 followed.

Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.

Sometimes we can say this with gladness, and sometimes we say it to brace ourselves because what’s in that cup has not, is not, and maybe will never go down easily.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

Future hope doesn’t displace present struggle. It helps to know I serve a God who knows struggle. I don’t remember the verse where Jesus put on a fake smile, and what He didn’t do, I don’t have to do, either. This tells me gratitude doesn’t spring from setting veneers but from accepting the real places God – My Lord, My Savior – has set for me.

I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

I hung up feeling well. I shouldn’t have been surprised – conversation with my friend does this. Nothing changed in my portion and cup today, but I accepted it more readily – and honestly – then I have in awhile. It helped to know she was praying for me. It helped to pray for her. Bottoms up!

All of this is to say, maybe you should call a friend from one of your obscure corners today. Ask her how she’s doing. Tell her how you’re doing! Friends make these portions, these cups, easier to bear. I think there’s a verse about that, too.