hurt

In the moment life breaks.

roadnottaken Something wrong will happen.  Count on it.  There will come a time when life will not add up or line up just as it should, or you anticipate it should.  There in the gap of life as it should be and as it actually ends up being, when your feet feel disorientation in what was expected and what is being experienced, something will be amiss.  Maybe you’re like me and faith will recoil in the surprise of life not adding up.  I remember after my first wife unexpectedly died despite prayers and pleas for death to not win out.  Not only did faith fade into my circumstance, but betrayal and anger seeped into place.

Things were not as they should be.  Often times, life lands just in this way and breaks more than our expectation.  We are broken in moments when reality separates from our expectation or hope. I think it is there when life breaks from our expectation and what we wanted, hoped for or thought doesn’t add up with how things end up being that we discover the greatest transaction aside from God’s love for us.  It is the trading of what we want for what actually is.  Healing while hurting transcends all that can ever possibly be wrong for the acceptance of all things always good for the heart belonging to God.

Those who learn to live well don’t learn to dance in the rain, make lemonade or smile through tears, but feel the bruise, wince and swallow the goodness of life that is rather than wander through thoughts of why things went wrong.

Life will break, friend. and so will you.  Things will not always add up and you will be disappointed.  Pain will threaten your security in life.  You may even feel dislodged by the unfair way life moves unconcerned of your needs, your identity or achievement.  Many a good men have lost it all here in their inability to heal while hurting and see beyond the day burning into the next.  There is always another day for the heart belonging to God for it is He who knows them all, and it is He who knows best the way brokenness.

He was despised and rejected by men;
 a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
 he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs
 and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
 smitten by God, and afflicted.
 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; 
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:3-5, ESV

(*image credit: thewrongsideofthepond.com)

In the Disappearance of Today.

hope Hope.

I often wonder of tomorrow, when I am older and time runs beyond me, when my bone and muscle move much slower than my heart leads, when I have more space in each day for thoughts to circle.  Thoughts of how life will be for them and what life’s pressures feel like then.

I remind myself: they were created for that day ahead.

And it waits for them.

“Dad, do you think I can be . . .”  You fill in the blank because my little girls ask about them all.  My strong reply always echoes the same.  “Yes, you sure can.”

They will meander close behind me and stray in the distance as my daughters grow, get  older and begin to stand surer in life.  There will be many instances where I have little control.  I feel their strings pull a bit more as their day gets closer.  The truth is I have very little control over their course in life.  God has allowed my opportunity to reflect His glory and nature into their lives, but it is He alone who owns the days ahead.

CONTINUE READING AT DEEPER FAMILY