Until Morning

Loneliness hits when you least expect it sometimes. Like a sudden storm, it moves in and overtakes the skies; blocks out the sun...

I sometimes feel like a fraud at work, telling my kids that there is hope; telling them to keep going and to push through when I myself am at war with my heart to stay hopeful and to not give up.

Tonight I find myself in the midst of that familiar storm. I've weathered it before, but it still catches me off guard even after having experienced it so many times. 

It sucks. Sometimes it takes all you have just to not grow cold and to not succumb to it's power. My wicked heart demands relief. Temptation to look up porn, to fantasize, to wallow in my sorrows, to cycle through old thoughts of self-hatred. etc come creeping in. It's in moments like these when I feel like God isn't listening or that He doesn't care. I know it isn't true. My life has been proof of that, but the feeling is still there and it overrides my logic. 

I hide it from my students, but I too am insecure, hurting, lonely, and craving for love and purpose. 

I know that God will see me through. I know that God is here in this moment. I have had many moments, even recently, when He made Himself known to me and stepped in. He loves me. 

Loneliness is here for the night and she will will be my guest, but I know that she will not stay long. God will always come in to help me pick up the mess she left behind and help putting things in order again. 

"Sorrow will last for the night...but joy comes with the morning."

On Eagles' Wings

When you're a kid, and the world is small, it is easy to imagine that you can make a difference; that you can save the world. Which is ironic cause most kids can't tell you why the world needs saving. They just know it does.

When I was young I fantasized about being a hero. I imagined that I could fly--that I could sweep in and save someone from harm and take them away to my secret hideout in the side of a mountain where nothing evil could reach it.

As I grew older and my world changed, I began to daydream that that same safe haven wasn't so safe. Family situations began to develop and my ability to comprehend the dysfunction started to shake the paradigms that I had developed within my concrete, 5-year-old mind. In my imaginary world I found that I would have to defend my sanctuaries against attack. Regardless, the place I had conjured in my mind was safe because I fought to keep it safe. Looking back as an adult, I can see the direct correlation between my imagination to my real life issues that I was trying to process out through story.

By the time I was a teenager, my imagination begat fewer and fewer beautiful realities and replaced them with stories of pain and struggle. Stories that didn't always turn out "happily ever after." And everything around me screamed that this...this was normal.

                                                                               ***

There is darkness and suffering. That's undeniable. It's everywhere we look. The beauty of the Gospel is that all can (and will) be redeemed! Christ, our great hope, is the foundation for believing and chasing after a world that is filled with peace and unity! In Christ, we can dare to believe that the impossible can happen; to believe that skin color, gender, and a thousand human variables don't have to divide us and that, in Christ, they won't!

Behold! the Light has come and the darkness cannot understand it!

***

Life has a tendency to clip our wings and strip us of our armor. It's easy to fall into the trap of hardship and despair; to forget that as kids we once flew above the tree and fought against ghosts and goblins. We have grown cold in our elder years with the pain of love and loss. The kingdom of elves has been closed off. The land of golden rivers and sapphire tress has all but vanished. 

"It's time to grow up", they say, not even knowing what they mean or why. 

Should growing up mean that we lose our wonder or that hope must be tucked away in a chest like it's just another child's toy that is no longer relevant or acceptable to play with? 

What would happen if we allowed ourselves the opportunity to hope again? to hope for a unified and peaceful humanity? to dare to believe that we can put an end to racism? to live in a world where border control wasn't needed or travel warning lists could all be burned?

What if we dared to believe that we could fly?