You’d think I would have learned by now that pushing things under doesn’t erase them, just makes it easier to keep going for the time being. But that undercurrent has a way of finding an outlet somehow, pressure building till it has enough force to break through any crack into broad daylight, break any heart with the weight of it all. Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall, and it may just have been the least little breath that eventually pushed him over into all those pieces.

And when the heart cracks wide open, it’s easy enough to look back and see the griefs pushed under, the problems with no solutions, the unexpected that pours in like rain, late nights and daily nuisances, and not near enough laughter. Easy too to name the things you have used to mute the sound of your soul, the outlets (most of them good) for that energy… did I really think it would all dissipate with time? Think I could carry all this brokenness around inside myself without running headlong to the Burden-Bearer, the Healer of my soul? At the time it felt like survival, but looking back it seems more like blind Self-sufficiency, a base-line assumption that I have to keep going and carrying it all because there isn’t any alternative. Or maybe just a giving up– resignation that this is all there is so you may as well get used to it. Really?  I do know better than this, and I sorrow again at how easy it is to lose sight of what is True.

It’s part of the fog of this world, the blindness that we breathe in, look through, hear every day…the spiritual grime that blankets creation like the worst kind of pollution. I need to be reminded often and strongly that Jesus is at work here, re-creating everything, making beautiful things out of all this dust. That He really is growing us to look like Himself… wiping our eyes clear of the muck so we can see Light and opening up ears to hear His quiet whispers… changing willful hearts to obey, strengthening weak bodies to serve. I need to take time to tell Him everything and to listen to what He tells me, because it takes time for Truth to sink down deep and do its healing work.

Help me see You. Help me find You with all these pieces.

“All this earth–
Could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come up from this
Ground at all?

All around,
Hope is springing up from this old ground;
Out of chaos life is being 
Found in You.
You make beautiful things…”
(Beautiful Things, Gungor)