I can go all day distracted and the moment I step inside the empty walls of my little west side apartment it sinks in, creeps up, and I find myself on my knees or curled up. Stuck on the stairs because I didn't make it through the door. These days I find myself staring, endlessly at the walls, thinking of nothing but that one thing. The one thing that keeps you up throughout the night and, once sleep finally comes, wakes you up again in the morning. Each thought followed by a whispered 'Jesus.' a desperate need for the one that will answer. The one that will draw near. The one that will end the way my body shakes and wash, like that breeze on saturday, over the anxious churning stomach and say to me beloved, what is your need. love of mine, i am your rock.
It's true that there is no manual in this life of how to get over him, of how to walk diligently through that process of grief. There is no list that allows us to know our end goal and to skip steps to be good again. It's also true that God never promised that his blessing would always be the good kind. He says he promises provision and faithfulness but in the way that means, Shan, you have to walk through a valley now. The thing is, it's a valley he made and one that is just deep enough for me to reach for that hand and know His name. It's just wide enough that each step is exhausting and in need of a reliant strength. It's just long enough that when I make it to "the other side" I'll have a massive hill to climb, but my legs will be stronger, my heart will be purer, and my mind will be set on the one thing that is better for me.
It was a week ago, three days before I turned 22, I was sitting on my bed, in my new room, in my new apartment, feeling some kind of desperate I had convinced myself was also new. I opened up this blog and started reading. Reading words that told me I had been here before. I have felt desperate. I have felt needy. I have felt ill equipped and lost and confused and forsaken. I may have never felt the sort of sadness I do at this moment, but a year ago I mourned the loss of something so deeply, so viscerally, I was convinced that God didn't know me. I was sitting on my bed telling myself that this was the first time I ever truly lost a thing that mattered when I read my own words telling the world that we are not without need and that God designed us to need him. It's true. You and me. Woven together with a gaping, unmistakable need for the direction and nearness of our Creator.
I may have spent some of these tears seeking out the affirmation and encouragement of that person that left. I may have had a few nights whispering to the dark ' I miss you' before falling asleep. But, it's been in the hundred other moments, the scary ones where you can't catch your breath, or you find yourself staring at a wall in the classroom, or the mundane 'I'm done thinking about this' moments, where I find him. Sitting in our furniture-less "Room of Requirement" forcing my hands open so that my palms face heaven and saying to him, I have nothing. Oh God, I have nothing. I have nothing to give you, but take this burden. Take my empty hands and fill me up. Be my song, my joy. I have nothing, Oh Jesus, I have nothing to give you but, say the word and raise these bones. I have nothing, yet I have you. Be my strength, my all in all. That is faithfulness, dear ones, your desperation, your need, your joy, your thankfulness, your praise, your broken heart, your goodness. It is faithfulness. Go to Him. Go to the thing that is better for you.
"In returning and in rest you shall be saved. In quietness and in trust shall be your strength."
Isaiah 30:15
