Before we get started, I want to share a couple thoughts.
If there's one thing I want to be, it's genuine. I don't want to maintain a façade, or waste time with surface-level, picture-perfect feelings...and honestly, that can be scary.
While I do approach this space as an online journal of sorts, it is uncomfortable to be vulnerable.
However, the people from whom I have learned the most, and have inspired me the most, are the people who committed to honesty and vulnerability.
I don't think I can help anyone by covering up my fears, doubts, or bad days. Perhaps that is why I love the Psalms--they are filled with emotion, questions, and cries. The writers are nothing if not honest. And God meets them there. He is not afraid of the questions, indifferent to the cries, or far away from the broken. One of God's promises is to be unchanging...and since we know His promises to be true, it makes sense to realize that God will also meet us in our dark places.
"I sought the LORD, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears." Psalm 34:4
I don't have all the answers. Sometimes it feels like I don't have any answers at all. I struggle with feeling like I can ask God my questions. I often cry when I pray. I want to share this here because I know other people feel like this too, and I want you to know that you are not alone.
Don't stop seeking.
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." Matthew 7:7
I wrote the poem below a couple of years ago--it takes up the last page in the only journal I ever completely filled.
I don't have much else to say, other than that this all feels very timely. Perhaps in sharing, I can encourage someone else, too.
nails
~ running back and forth from seeking answers to plugging my ears and running if they get too close ~
I just want to stop feeling so much
To have your heart be an apple that just keeps getting bruised over and over again hurts. Doesn't it eventually rot?
Oh, but child, I want your heart to be after mine.
I ache for the ones I love too--and my heart aches for you.
Do you think I have not also known the sting of rejection?
The physical, ripping pain when I covered your sins?
I have felt isolation, I have felt humiliation.
I have felt nails, I have felt thorns, I have felt death.
Doesn't it hurt to feel so much? Yet
Don't stop feeling so much.
That hurt is what, right now, helps draw you close to me.
And I promise to give you an overflowing of joy and peace
to share with everyone around you.
We're all hurting.
Don't stop seeking.
