Soft, Gray Mornings

I'm always thoughtful on soft gray mornings. This one seems gentle, though it's actually a hurricane that has caused it. I am thinking, feeling, trying to understand what is going on in my heart and in the world around me, with my friendships, with my dreams, trying to make sense out of everything that has happened over the summer.

It was a long summer, and I am a different person. At the beginning of the summer, it seemed that everything was looking up, and that the things I have prayed about for so long were really going to come to pass. Now, at the end of my summer, life seems even more uncertain than it has ever been, and I don't know what the next hour will bring.

It's an adventure, I'll say that. I can't help wishing that it were somewhat predictable, somewhat stable, hoping that perhaps I might be able to rest sometime from this tiredness that has been building and building over the last couple of years. Some days, I don't feel as though I can even go on.

I'm not depressed, really. Just pensive. If someone were to ask me what I want out of life this morning, I could give them the pat answers: "Oh, yes I want God," but I would not believe it today. I know that I should want God. I know that He truly is my portion. But I cannot understand how I can be human and hurt so much when He is supposed to meet my every need.

Or, could that perhaps be what the groaning is about that Paul speaks of in 2 Corinthians 4-5? I do want what is seen--but what is unseen is so much more beautiful. Faith makes that possible, I am coming to see. Somehow, the intangible becomes tangible through faith. I do not understand this mystery of God. How can you touch what cannot be touched, or see what cannot be seen?

How do you love what cannot be loved? Oh how that ache would take me today! And K... He is breaking, but I don't know if he will run to God. I don't know how much longer I can take the pain of loving him--it seems it's already been an eternity, yet he seems to daily grow farther from hope.There are so many I love--so many who feel a pain that I am inadequate to take from them, and so inadequate to bear.

I do not know what God is doing in my life right now, but I think He's going deep inside of me, and I don't know what He will show me. I think I don't want to know right now, but I know He will make it plain in His time. The lessons are no longer the quick "Here is something--work on this" lessons that I used to pray for. Now, God is taking me deeper to show me something about Himself.

I wonder. Does He love like this? Because I feel like I'm going to blow apart with the pain of this brokenness. I asked God to break my heart, but I never could have foreseen this. If He loves K even as much as I do--but He loves him more!--how much safer must K be in His love? For it is God Himself who is showing me how to love K with His love, and drawing me from the bitterness and cynicism back into the safety of His arms. He is teaching me to trust Him.

There is no guarantee with this love. There never was. But it has changed me. It is changing me still. Is that why He tells us to love Him above all? Because it is not the discipline that changes us, but the Person of God? How can we ever grasp the deep implications of reconciliation to God? How can we, as humans, ever understand how God must feel about us until He fills us with His love for us? That is why we love our neighbor.

So on this soft gray morning, I ache.