To Dance Upon The Heartache

It's a line from a song I've grown to love in recent years... words stating that it's possible to "dance upon our heartache," and I'm asking myself if that could actually be true. Can you learn to celebrate, to be thankful even as you stand on the shattered remnants of what once was? Can you find a way to move to new rhythms of Grace even while mourning the pain? 

The 27th. A day that sticks out for me each year like a sore thumb, inescapable. I cannot ignore how I felt all those years ago when an eighteen-year-old me sat in this same house with these same dear friends and lived through the loneliest night of her life, confronted by the reality that she had nowhere to run but into the arms of a God she barely knew with nothing but questions on her mind. 

Fifteen years ago, she sat in the dark...her father fighting for his life in the hospital, her mother still at his side, the friends already in bed... and fought off all the fear demons as she wrestled with why a good Father would allow something like this to wreck her dreams. Little did she know it would be in that very wrecking that He would capture her heart. 

The pursuit of God is always toward the most isolated. Where you least think you'll discover Him is where He's found most, always chasing after you with a love so irresistible and free. And it's in the destroying of all you've held dear that you come to realize what you need most: a God who won't let go of you even when your very own grip slips. 

All these years later, we sit in this same place and everywhere I see memories of that day. So interesting how her birthday always falls on the day that held so much trauma, so much fear. Almost like it's an invitation to re-frame where I've been. Always a welcoming into new beginnings on the ruins of what was. I can feel the tension already in my shoulders that morning upon waking - the holding in of a pain few will ever know, the haunting of those emotions and feelings that enveloped my soul and led me down a journey I never asked for or wanted but one that, nonetheless, changed everything. 

There's a lot that's stayed the same all these years because we've been celebrating her all these years. But there's also a lot that's different... because I'm different, and if you don't keep changing with the ever-changing seasons of your life, you lose yourself and you lose out on the miracle of who you're becoming. You never find your way because you kept fighting The Way who would lead you where you're meant to go. 

Following a beautiful hike into the wilderness of natural beauty that we call home here in Alaska, we find ourselves laughing at a hilarious movie, forgetting past pain and focusing on being present... finding joy. And I suddenly realize that it's happening - this is what it means to dance upon the heartache! This is what it looks like to write new chapters and forge new paths, knowing that the places of our greatest hurts can also become the spaces of our freshest starts. 

Trauma will lie to you and trauma will paralyze you and trauma will try to get you to see nothing but the bad that's befallen you, leaving you to forget all the happy that came before and to doubt the hope that will be and to keep you stuck in a perpetual time-freeze that holds you captive... unless... 

Unless you choose the brave way - the holy way. 

Unless you turn your face into the darkness and take the hand of God and agree to walk together through the deepest valleys and dare to believe that goodness will prevail. 

Decide to dance upon your heartache and you push back against the Enemy and all he can throw at you. 

Decide to move where Grace moves and you give those fear-giants the boot and remind them Who's bigger, stronger, greater than them. 

Decide to find the music again and you take back power from trauma itself, tapping into the strength you've learned over time and discovering a way forward that keeps you going forward because you refuse to stay stuck in the past. 

Every day you get to choose which direction you'll go - through the hard things or away from them but know too that, if you decide to run away from them, they will still follow you. They will find a way to chase you down because God uses hard things to mould you and He never stops pursuing you ever! Yes, you may escape them for a time - you may refuse to join the dance party of those millions of brave ones who dared to get up and move again - but someday, somewhere you will find you've run right back into what you once tried to escape. 

Because difficulties are inescapable. Wounds are unavoidable. Heartbreak is undeniable. 

But true also is this: He is unshakable and He is indestructible and the One who guides you through all these valleys promises you'll come out the other side... because you're His and He is yours and together, you can make it though anything. The peace He gives within you can overcome any fears outside you, and the things you think you can never put behind you are the very things He uses to transform you so that one day, you discover that what tried to destroy you never could... because He held you. 

I take in the happiness and the fact that there sits my entire family, dad included, alive and survived and I, a well-seasoned fighter in the battle for faith, still leaning into the things my heart would rather avoid and choosing to trust Him no matter what. 

That date, however still difficult, spelled the end of me. The old me, that is. But it also spelled a beginning... a first step towards hope and believe in the face of doubt. A step toward a life unmasked, unhindered. And, when so much came of that one dark night, I have no choice but to keep taking the broken way because it's always led me to the best way. 

Trauma will continue to knock and fear will continue to lie but I... I have decided to keep looking for where He is in the midst. To not be afraid of a sudden doubt, a sudden shake-up, a sudden pain. Because the suffering Savior found me in such a place and I know He can and will find me there again.