2020 has thrown me some curveballs I never saw coming. At the beginning of this year, I lost a friendship, dissolved a business partnership, battled the toughest transactions of my career, and tough times kept on and on. The loss I have felt this year has been unbearable. The pain I have felt over and over has taken every once of zeal from my body.
I have had to come to terms with some of the hardest truths of my life this year. I have had to stare it down and accept what it had to say regardless of how much it ached. In doing so, I have realized there was an anger there with God lying there face down in the dirt. There it was dirty and ugly and ready to be confronted.
When sorrows like sea billows roll, it’s terribly hard not to become angry. When they refuse to leave you be, you feel forgotten, overlooked, punished even. When pain doesn't subside, strength does. You get weary. You want to give up. You want someone to blame.; someone to point the finger at.
I have pointed mine up.
I have cried a sea of tears to “ Why God? Why am I going through this again and again. I don’t understand. Why are you bringing back things I have let go of? Why are you opening up old wounds? Why are you placing this pain right in my lap?”
I have begged him to give me my friend back, let this cup pass, take the pain, give me back everything I've lost and fill my lack.
But. He hasn’t.
That is just the bitter truth.
The pain is a fire still burning bright. The loss I feel, still immeasurable.
I have sat banging my fists on the ground begging him to remember me here. I have wept at his feet swearing he couldn't see me or hear me. I have asked a million times with every breath, for him to not pass me by.
I can not see his light.
But.
I know it’s there.
I know he’s there.
I know he is faithful because he can’t be anything else. I know he is sure, because he can’t be anything else. I know he is mighty to save because he can't be anything else.
In the breathless ache of night, he is there. Hope is there.
Hope sings a song in my ear of a brighter and more beautiful tomorrow. It dances all around me showing me all the ways I am loved and not forgotten. It whispers his love to me in the fear and shouts it loudly at me in the pain.
I am angry. I am faithless.
But he is not.
I know he is there picking up all my broken pieces putting them back together with his lacquer of love. I can’t see it and I can’t feel it. But I know he is in there alive in me, faithfully stirring hope in my heart, giving purpose to my pain.
I know no matter what I see, no matter what I feel, no matter what is whispered to me in the wilderness, he is good.
He can't be anything else.
Hope is alive in me and I am holding it tightly for it's the one thing I can't bear to let go of.
" The Lord is my portion," Says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." - Lamentations 3:24
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