Its funny how sometimes life sweeps your feet
out from under you. Funny is the
wrong word - painful is probably more appropriate. We get comfortable and things become easy, and then
bam…you’re on your back and its difficult to even work out how you got
there. Life has felt a little like
that lately for me. Some of you
may have read my previous post about Alex. My little boy from Banda who passed away over a month ago
now. Every day I think about Alex,
I still regularly cry about how much I miss him, and I still very much feel the
pain of having to say good bye to him way to early in his life.
Death is a really hard thing to process. And its not until living in this
country that I have fully understood that. In the last year and a half I have prayed for 5 people to be
raised from the dead. I have
comforted children after losing their mother, I have carried a 1 month old baby
back from the hospital in a bag, I have looked into the face of one of my most
precious little boys and said goodbye, I have fought through the crowd in my
slum to be stared in the face by the hopelessness of a premature baby thrown in
the river by a mother who didn’t know what else to do and I have prayed with
the family of a dear friend taken at the age of 27 by AIDs.
Life…
It sweeps your feet out from under you.
There is nothing that can ever prepare you for
what I have seen and been exposed to over the 18 months. The darkness that has covered this
earth is thick and heavy. You can
breathe it in and you can feel it.
Its so very easy to close your eyes but its impossible not to breathe or
to feel.
So I suppose my question is how do I keep
breathing? How do I keep feeling?
In this place where the reality is that people die every day how do I
stay vulnerable? How do I stop my
soul from hiding deep down under all the hurt and all the crap so it never
feels again? There are so many
questions. But very slowly I think
I'm learning. I'm moving forward.
You know when you fall on your back there is
only one place you can look…
Up.
When you fall on your back you are forced into
a position that means you focus less on what’s going on around you, and more on
what is happening above. Looking
up seems to me to be the only way forward at the moment. Because when I look into heaven I'm
reminded that through everything God is still good, He is still with me, I have
not been left to walk this journey alone.
And the even more beautiful thing is that when I look into heaven, I see
the faces of those I have said goodbye to, I see hope in the most hopeless of
situations, and I am able to breathe in, I'm able to breathe in a little more
darkness as hope makes its heaviness light. I'm able to feel a little more, I'm able to grow my heart
and stand in the darkness with my eyes raised and my hands open.
You see, Jesus makes everything beautiful. Not because he sugar coats stuff or he
makes life easy, but because He is there in it all. In the movement and the still, in the joy and the mourning,
in the dark and the light, He is there.
He is so very present. I am
not alone.
I have been listening to this song on repeat at
the moment…Its by Kristene DiMarco and it reminds me to keep looking up.
…
“The
darker the night
The brighter the day
The fiercer the fight
The stronger the faith
So I place my hope in You…”
“In
Your ways oh God
Redemption is so much better than perfection
In Your ways oh God…”
“Over and over
You prove You're so faithful
Over and over
You prove Yourself a redeemer”
…
The
darker the night, the brighter the day.
