the darker the night, the brighter the day

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.