The dark can be so daunting
The light can seem so dim
Still, from heaven, you are calling.
Can I hear your voice again?
No fear in death or life, though all of hell presses in
Your voice, the roaring lion, shatters mountains and hangs on the wind.
Still small voice, speak to me. I’m listening!


Tomorrow is a glass half full.
Tonight is a memory.
I exhale with baited breath to find myself on my knees.
And I know it’s “worth it” if I die another day.
And I know there’s purpose in the things I choose not to say.
But it was you and me against the world until you were gone.
Now it’s me and me to fight alone and I’ll sing some lonely song. Maybe I should just face the truth that you’re gone.
Maybe I was the “missing one” all along.
I sit in silence for hours and days while the world passes by unhinged. I watch the clock dismantle and in haze because time no longer makes sense.
Then I breathe and remember that today will be gone in an instant and tomorrow will either repeat the same or be glorious.
Tonight I choose the latter.
I don’t want to be here. This place, my soul hates, this void of existence….but here I am. People talk from the outside about who I should be, who I am, the next moves I should make in this existence that is my life. What do they know?
This place is a place of pain, of heartache and grief. No one else knows the ache. Similar stories are of no relevance here. This moment is mine and I am alone in it.
So a word of advice from the depths of a bleeding soul…don’t say you understand. Don’t say it’s okay. Don’t try to minimize or trivialize. Just be there. A person with skin on who actually cares is all that’s required.
Grief takes many forms and actualizes for many reasons. You probably can’t fully understand so be someone to lean on. Empathy takes many forms. At the end of the day, we’re all different. We’ve had different histories, different struggles. What feels one way to you may feel entirely different to me.
Embrace the difference. Hold in your hand the willingness to not understand but care anyway. Humanity brings its own version of struggle and wholeness. Don’t try to assess mine based on yours. Just be there.
Tomorrow will be better and even if it’s not, life goes on. We grow. We learn. We change. Tonight I’m not settling. Tomorrow I may be a pool of self loathing. The next day, I might be a warrior. We are human.
God sees. He knows. He heals. He helps us grow. Don’t shirk from the hard things. Don’t minimize them in others. Be kind. Bring truth. Love without abandon. And just like that the world is a better place.
Sincerely, a broken hearted optimist.
It’s been a hard year. It seems like we’ve all said that so many times now, it’s become an anecdote. The reasons for its sting are different for everyone. I wish for me, it were simply the work of a pandemic and its’ resulting madness, but it’s been so much more than that. The darkness of all the broken parts of my story threatened to undo all of me, everything I’ve built, and the woman I’ve become. I am so grateful for the light I’ve found in spite of it, that lifts me.
The hand of God still reaches for me. His fingers lightly nudging the stony parts of my heart until it beats again with softness. I am slowly ambling my way out of the deep into the deeper, truer, reasonableness that is faith.
I read a quote this morning from Ann Voskamp, “He who is driven by fear delays the comfort of God.” I can see it so clearly now. I lost sight of truth for a time…of all the wonder and goodness. I let fear take the wheel and drive. It drove me in circles in a vacuum of sorts. I was unable to find the air that fear had stolen from me. I gave it away. I was just along for the ride until I remembered it’s my car and took back the keys.
Now the comforter is near, wrapping me up once again. He never left but I had kicked Him off when the room got too hot. I forgot that He alone is enough. Isn’t remembering the things we too often forget, one of the greatest things in life?
The hard stuff can either make us hard or draw us to Him. Choose wisely and don’t let fear anywhere near your car.
When the light turns on, the darkness becomes inconsequential. The glory appears in the brilliance of the light. It’s all in your perspective.
I confess, I’ve been lost in the shadows for awhile. I can’t explain why I let the light hide. I can’t explain why I couldn’t find it, but I lost track of it somehow. I let my pen fall silent. The same pen, I’ve so often prayed to “be a pen in the hand of a ready writer”, as the Psalmist says (Psalm 45:1), I tucked away deep inside of myself. I soaked it in tears. I allowed my story to become a side plot in someone else’s book.
I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t know that we ever really possess that capability. We’re all walking through our journeys with different points of reference, different experiences, different packs strapped to our backs carrying the remnants of yesterday’s climb. That’s where empathy comes in. When our understanding falters, we can choose to hear. We can choose to dig deep with compassion and find the eternal spark in each other. The humanity veiling divine destiny in another person can lead us to love deeply even when we don’t get it. But I digress.
I feel like I’ve, too often, used the phrase, “It’s been a hard season.” It’s a great Christian cliché to hide behind. Mainly, because this time, I’m sick of it. I don’t want to say it all again. I don’t want to admit that I’ve been wandering around in the desert for forty years in the same shoes. Now I’m realizing that maybe I needed the desert to find the sun.
If the eye is the lamp of the body (Matthew 6:22) and Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12), and He lives in me, shouldn’t I be seeing things through His perspective and not my own limited one? Shouldn’t I be shining the same light to others instead of closing my eyes tight and thinking if I don’t look, maybe it will all disappear? Shouldn’t I be holding my head high in the middle of the struggles, knowing that He’s got me?
Maybe I can stand again, pull up my socks, lace up my boots, and continue walking. Maybe I need to stop and rest and breathe in the moments that make me human. Maybe I need to trust. I am surrounded by light.
So I throw these words into the air defying the silence. They may not mean anything to you, but to me, they mean I’m alive. To me, they mean I’m done wandering. To me they mean, I will fight for myself, strengthened in weakness, until I become who I really am. To me, that’s enough.
Morning always comes a little too soon yet somehow carries promises of newness, mercies, and hope. I carry with me habitual optimism so the breaking dawn looks to me like joy and vision spanning the gap between darkness and light.
I travel inward, deeply, as the colors move and change before me. I ready myself for the coming blaze of fire, sometimes obscured by cloud. It’s an ever present reminder that the world still turns and all things give way to the maker who spun it all into order and motion. I revel in the wonder and watch for the romance. I hold my breathe still, my heart soft, my hands out, searching for fulfillment of purpose. I know destiny lives in dreaming with eyes wide open.
There, I find you. There, I can do anything.
I haven’t been writing lately. Not because the desire has left me but because I knew what came out would be messy. Quite honestly, lately, life has been messy. All of the broken and jagged pieces I’d thought time had smoothed, surfaced with force, cutting through my clay heart and thin skin. What remained was a tattered, worn, version of me. I guess it’s true when the scripture says to be careful when you think you stand because you will fall. I am, once again, a living example of this principle. You’re welcome.
Maybe there’s extra grace there, somewhere in the rubble. There’s this extra measure of assurance that if we can get through so many ups and downs and He hasn’t failed us yet, maybe it’s true that He won’t fail. Maybe we will fail, as we so often do, but in the end, there’s a beauty in the mess if we can only take the risk of embracing it.
You see, I don’t have to prove myself. I don’t have to be clean to come to the one who washes me. I don’t have to have it all together before I come to the one who knit me together in my mother’s womb. I don’t have to have it all figured out to lean in close and hear His wisdom. I don’t have to play all the right notes before I listen to the song He sings over me. And there again is the beauty…that in the midst of the mess, He’s still singing. He never stopped singing. So maybe I should sing too.
So with reckless abandon, I choose today, to sing wildly. I jump to my feet, dodging the obstacles, and dance. The mess probably won’t go away anytime today or maybe even tomorrow, but piece by piece, I know He will rebuild me. I am more than the messes. I am a victor. My messy heart will sing in wonder, not because of who I am, but because of who He is and how vast His love is for me. What more could anyone ask for?
Blurs are often ended with the bluntness of a break. A single straw that interrupts the momentum long enough for sanity to creep in and remind me that I am more than this.
In the quest for perfection, I lost sight of the adventure. In the race towards better, I steadily slipped into worse. In the pursuit of holiness, I forgot to trust in grace. Somewhere in between it all, I stopped breathing. I lost myself when I quit looking.
Today, I’m thankful for the straw. Small fractals of light that shine through offense, wake me from my hypnotism. Freedom often comes when I least expect it. Thank you straw man! Lord, please block my path when I get stuck on auto-pilot.
It’s all been a whirlwind. I’m sure you’ve been there, when life creeps in and steals…well, the life right out of you. Then suddenly I realize in the midst of the grind, the day to day, the chaos, that I don’t have to allow it all to get the best of me. I can choose to stop even when the madness doesn’t. I get the privilege of deciding what warrants immediate attention and what can wait. I get to decide that I’m important too.
I think mothers are so easily susceptible to what I’ll call the squishing. The systematic pressing down of oneself in favor of those you love and/or those who scream the loudest. Then suddenly, the music stops, the writing ceases in lieu of more pressing priorities. All that was placed in you by the creator is shelved for another time…a seemingly mythic day when there’s quiet, though you know the heart will cry when quiet comes because they have grown and you may have missed something.
I think at the end of the day, we can have it all. We can treasure the moments of motherhood, maintain some measure of order and cleanliness, actually shower, and still be us. I know, I know, sounds too good to be true. I still believe that God placed treasure in earthen vessels and that He never gives us a load too difficult for us to bear. We may need to exercise our faith muscles. We may need to work diligently to find balance. We may need to learn to say no or ask for help but it may be worth it.
Today, I’m making a resolution that I will make myself make time. I will read. I will write. I will sing. I will play. Yes, I’ll still clean and nurse and nurture and teach but I will make the time to be me. The world will be a better place and I will be a better version of myself. Today, I’m determined.
Though I’ve been missing in action for a while, I’m coming back to life, one decision at a time and I shouldn’t have to miss me much longer.
