Those You Are Closest To Can Hurt You The Most

It hurts my heart that I will never be able to share with some people close to me about the most important things in my life, because we see life differently.

There is such beauty in relationships that span generations, but oh, there can be so much hurt too.  One person sees their way as right, and so does the other.  But really, what's important is that both of those ways are right for those two people in their own way.

The last year has been hell for me.  There have been bright spots, but they are so hard to see amidst the darkness.  Sometimes I forget they were there at all.  I am so thankful for those who have stuck by me when I couldn't see any light, but supported me in my brokenness and in my reality.  You saved me.

And there were those who weren't able to support me and in fact criticized me for my new way of looking at life through a glass, darkly.  To them, it was better that I put on a happy face instead of persisting in wading through the pain.

I think the most important thing I have learned in the past year is that wading through your pain, no matter how dark it may be and no matter how long, and sharing it with your community, is so much better than holding it all in, letting it build up in bitterness year after year, eating away at your heart.

So thank you to those who shouldered my burdens with me, and trudged through the muck and the mire, no matter how deep it was or for how long it continued.  To those who cried with me, who listened to me sob, who prayed for me, and who persisted to pursue me when I wasn't much of a friend.  I am so thankful for you.

And to those with whom my relationships are broken: I pray for you.  I pray that someday, we will be able to talk again and accept our ways of looking at life, and that neither of them is "right" but that they are right for each of us. 

When Life Has Cut Too Deep

When life has cut too deep and left you hurting
And the future you had hoped for is now burning
And the dreams you held so tight lost their meaning
And you don't know if you'll ever find the healing

~Britt Nicole, The Sun is Rising


It has.  Life has cut too deep and left me hurting, and the future I had planned went up in flames.  All the good God-given longings have been left unfulfilled, and as a result, I find myself fighting every moment of every day to find some part of me, no matter how small, that still believes that God delights in giving me good gifts. 

You know how you tend to remember the bad things easier and more than the bad?  I find myself looking at the past four years of my life and seeing darkness.  Although I know there were parts that were filled with good times and lots of light, I have a hard time focusing on them and even remembering what they were. 

Even when you're drowning in your doubt

Drowning in my doubt.  I couldn't have said it better.  I struggle, oh how I struggle, to see through the doubt.  I feel like I'm drowning under a wave of darkness, trying desperately to grab hold of something good and tangible.  Something real that I can cling to.  But every day is an exhausting fight against the tide and the waves.  And it feels like they're winning.  My arms hurt from treading water.  I've tried to let Jesus carry me.  But every time I do, I feel like my lungs fill with the saltwater of my own tears.  Would he let me drown?

Dreams they come
Plans they change
Yeah, we're gonna break....
Let's go back to the summer, summer when
We dreamed in love, let's go back again
Let's go back again, yeah back again my friend
To the summer when....

Yes, let's go back.  I'd go back in a heartbeat.  To the days of being a child in the summer, when my biggest worries included being bored, my popsicles falling off their sticks into the sand, and being ignored by the cute lifeguard.  I was ignorant.  And then my eyes were opened to the suffering all around me.  And my heart was set on fire for the lost, the lonely, the defenseless and the weak. 

You were young, you were free
And you dared to believe you could be the girl
Who could change the world
Then your life took a turn
And you fell and it hurt

And then I went to go and train myself in what seemed the best way at the time.  But it didn't live up to my expectations.  And it was hard.  And God stripped away the very thing he had given me: a passion for the oppressed.  Because it had become an idol.  And I had ignored the sound of his voice.  I fell, and it hurt.  Every day feels like a struggle to stand up.  And just when I think I've stood up far enough out of the dirt to let the scars and scabs heal, I fall again, and my wounds are rubbed with dirt and salt..  And they never heal.  I've spent a year trying to stand up.  And every time I look around for Jesus to pick me up, it seems he's walked away and given up.  I clean my wounds daily with my salty tears, hoping the sting of the salt will bring me back to the present.  So that I can feel again.  But it doesn't. 

I feel like Eustace from the Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis.  Four years ago I became an ugly, greedy dragon.  And God's been at work ever since, tearing off the scales.  It's the process of sanctification.  But it hurts.  And the scars never have enough of a chance to heal before another one is ripped off.  Sometimes I wish he'd never started ripping off the scales.  Because then I could have what I want, have my old friends and significant other back.  Sometimes I wish I was still living with all the scales on.