Still Okay

 Aegean-blue waves lap the shoreline as I find a comfortable piece of driftwood to sit down on. Soft breeze blowing in my face, I close my eyes and try to soak in all this tranquil. Sun warms my face and I feel I'm trying to let something deep inside me thaw. Something that has closed off itself to feeling all things thankful. Something essential to finding God in all the difficult. 

So strange that even on a summer day, it can still be winter. 

Having packed up a lunch and headed for the mountains again, I've come to this lake-side beauty to reset my soul. Just a full-on freedom that reminds me of a vast world and a big God and a forever-grace that always remains. Like a dried-up sponge, I take in my surroundings and wonder if this isn't partly what God intended when He said that He'd give living water to those who thirst. 

Walking along the shoreline trail awhile later, I feel a deep assurance in my heart that, somehow in some unknown way, this will all be okay. It hasn't felt okay for a long time. After all, how can losing your best friend at age 31 to a heart attack be okay? Or how can experiencing the rejection of someone you loved be okay? Or how can a world-wide virus and all its myriad implications be okay? Or how can a years-long battle with depression be okay? Or an on-going struggle with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress? 

None of it feels okay. And I haven't felt okay in some time. Even a year later after receiving the most devastating news I've ever gotten, I still find myself huddled in the bathroom crying over a loss I've yet to fully accept. Perhaps I never will. They say time heals all wounds but sometimes it feels as though time just extends them. Just deepens them. Just continues to remind you of all the things you've lost and all the things that change or never will be. And all you want is to feel okay again. Or maybe just to learn to be okay with not being okay. 

I think of how, in just a few days, I will celebrate yet another turn around the sun. Another year lived. They're funny things, birthdays are. They remind you of how the lifetime is quickly adding up, of how one is steadily stacking days into months into years. And it all makes you ask yourself if what you're doing with your one short life is really counting for something. I tell God how it seems as though there's been more heartache than hope, more sorrow than joy, and how could I ever feel as though there's something more to all this than one endless funeral of losses and crumbling dreams. 

But then I suddenly realize...

Pain can shape a life, but it can also shape a destiny. 

Not everyone's story will be written in lines of "look what they did!" But isn't it more important that a life can shout, "look what He did?" And perhaps we're more apt to do that if we've felt the everlasting grip of the Almighty in our worst moments than in our best ones. Perhaps the story worth telling isn't how you managed to get this far by your best days and your greatest achievements but by your most dependent days and the times when all that carried you was the kind, compassionate love of the Savior you know. 

As a child, they don't tell you about the hard things ahead. They don't tell you about all the moments that will one day break your heart. They don't tell you about the times you'll doubt and fear will threaten to tear you in two. They don't tell you about all the points in your life when you'll be driven to despair and you'll wonder if God even cares. They don't tell you. They just promise you a good life. A happy life. A suffering-free life. 

But He tells me otherwise. He tells me in this world I'll have trouble. The stories of all worthy saints back up this truth. But He also tells me to take heart. Take heart because He's in charge. Because He's overcome. Because the battle is His. And all these difficult years are somehow weaving together to prove a greater grace, a bigger yes, a larger good than if it all had happened otherwise. 

And so I tell my heart to welcome in another year, one second of hope at a time. Standing on the trail's edge, I capture life - camera in hand. A butterfly flies by and there is no sound, save for the lapping of waves, the soft whisper of breeze, and the occasional bird singing. This. This is peace. And how can I not be grateful for this? Grateful that God has not left me in this fallen world alone and that all the magnificent creation is joining together to remind this aching soul that, one day, everything will be okay. And in the meantime, because of Jesus, I can still be okay.