Finding life...

Day after day I struggle to feel… to feel joy or sorrow or pain or contentedness… nearly anything at all would be fine with me.  On good days the joy does come.  A smile from the boy as he leaps to my arms or the sound of the girl's deep laughter filling the space and then some or a twirl in the kitchen in the arms of the one I love, they remind me that I am still alive.  Breath fills the alveoli of my lungs, only to be pushed back out again.  Blood courses through my veins and so often my heart pounds loudly enough that I hear it with my ears.  Physically, I am alive.  Yet I strive to live.  I strive to feel.  I struggle to be more than just alive.  On good days the joy will come and it rolls in like a summer storm, filling the places so dry, cracked and lifeless… quenching the thirst of the drought wrecked land… and then it blows away as suddenly as it arrived.  

"I'm alive even though a part of me has died." says the lyrics of a song and each time the words touch my ears I'm certain that a part of me has died.  The harsh judging words of a friend left me beaten and unsure that I held any value at all. The betrayal of another left me questioning whether I could even hear His voice.  The unexpected passing of my sweet Papa, the biological father I'd known for way too short a time just left me absolutely undone... in the worst possible way.  The brokenness, the selfishness and the rejection of all that is good, of all that has been redeemed surrounds me at each turn and has left me wounded, broken and bleeding on the spiritual emergency room floor… I gasp for breath, flailing, reaching desperately for my throat as the wailing scream climbs from deep within my soul and fills the room as I cling to life.  I am that drought wrecked land. Barren, exhausted and unable to produce anything that resembles life.  No matter how hard I try, no matter what new thing I commit to my days… my heart wastes away wondering why in the world I am here.  

Why?  Why am I here?  

Surely it isn't just me.  Knowing the truth but not feeling it in my bones.  Believing that I am a new creation, not in my image but His… yet, finding a tired, depleted and weary reflection in the mirror each morning.  Acquainted with the sound of His voice but overcome by the silence penetrating the depths of my soul. 

It is a season of drought... a time in the valley... a time when grief is a constant companion. 

Yet, if I open my eyes, turn them away from myself I can see, off in the distance, the tiniest of flowers growing from the crack in the dry ground... there in that deep valley is a creek... it was the water in that creek that made the valley.  It carved out a space in the ground, washed away the dirt and in the bed of that creek are moss covered rocks big enough to climb, fish swimming upstream... it's there, can you see it?  Life.  

The last couple of years of my life have contained more loss than any of the prior almost four decades, combined.  I've lost pets, friends, family members, passion, hope, dreams, health and the list goes on.  A part of me has died but I am alive.  So, I get up each day and I kiss my babies and my husband.  I find something to be grateful for, every day.  I call (or text) my friends and family.  I pray constantly.  Tullian Tchividjian said something about life being harder more than it is easy.  That's not a direct quote but it's the best I can remember it.  It's so true.  God never promised that life would be easy and it's not, just that He would be with us wherever we go and He does.  It's up to us to acknowledge Him.  So, I choose to open my eyes and see Him...  EVERY.SINGLE.DAY... I look for Jesus... 

                                   ... and I find Him.