Choosing Happy

It's a glorious thing to see that even with some lingering pain beneath the surface, I can choose joy, choose to be at peace.  Some days my mind is so broken that I can't pull myself through, but the Lord wraps my mind and heart in His comfort and love, and as I rest and find my body refreshed with sleep and my heart refreshed with prayer.

So today I am choosing happy.  The joy is deep-seated, and present even in the pain.  But today with the absence of too many academic pressures, and the sun streaming through the branches outside, the glimmers of joy through the faces of tiny, precious babies, the mix of orange and green leaves inviting me outdoors...  I can choose Happy.

So I am.

Choosing Happy.

Feelings.

Writing feelings.  Writing depth.  The pain and heartache weeping from my frustratingly dry eyes.  On this day of celebrating gratefulness and enjoying time with friends and friends who become family, I find myself numbed to the world around me, only observing the warmth around me.  It's strange how quickly the feeling goes away when the cracked part of my mind allows the feelings to slip through.

It's pain, but it's the absence of feeling.  It's heartache, but lonely abandonment.  It's too full to feel, yet absolutely empty.  A little laughter frosts the top, sharpening the tips and edges of my sensitivity... maybe I can feel again?  After sleep.

Holed away and comforted by solitude, overwhelmed by the love and family.  Pleasant fear, familiar and tired.  The shivers in the warmth, the silence as the chatter abounds.

And the voices of loved ones on the phone, a little joy in the middle of my tenderness.

I'm grateful.

Grateful

Sometimes it takes the most terrifying things to make you realize the many blessings you've been given.  That the tiny things are not to be taken for granted.  Today was a day like that.

After darkness swirling around my head and heart and soul for a night, I awoke to the wonder that life still is, that my chest still fills with breath and my heart still beats.  The trials of studies, the wonders of the soul, the failures and learning to count them as stepping stones.

"'It' only goes away when you face it and put it away."

Throwing it up doesn't make it go away.

But when you awake to your terrified self simply mired in a haze of incredulity, and stare out the window to see only... fog.  Ten million tiny drops of water suspended in the air, and the early morning light lost inside it, caught, unable to find its way out.

Dressing methodically.  Eyeliner.  Eye shadow.  Mascara.  Shirt.  Skirt. Shoes.  Down the stairs and out the door to the misty world, and no umbrella.  I briefly considered counting 40 steps up again and finding the tiny tool, but then I decided that with time and raindrops I could do better, and stepped out into the world, showered lightly with water from the air around me.

Grateful for the misting, even as I contemplated grumbling.  Grateful for moments of being dry as I walked beneath some covering.  And as I felt the last pieces of darkness, I reached out, thankful I have a God to speak with.  Who hears all, who knows all, who feels every piece of my existence even as I live it.

Grateful for phone calls, and stories and coffee and the chance to learn.  Grateful for existence on this planet.  For people to smile as I pass them.  Grateful as the sun slips from its shroud, that the yellow trees are now lit up and bright with fervour and joy, intensely lived.

I cannot express the depths of gratefulness in my tired heart and soul today.  For I still find fear in the mirror, in the eyes of others, in the ends of my days.  But I also find hope there often.  And in the dark I cling to that.

For my gratitude is not some unreality of fate, grateful to the fact that something is, but it is, in the chaos of life, a gratefulness to my precious Jesus, Creator, God.  My Truth.  My Rock.

So I cling, in gratitude, grateful He Is, and that by His sufficient grace, I breathe.

The Chasm

It's one of those moments where I know there are a million thoughts and words inside my mind and heart and soul, but I'm not sure exactly how to access them.  There is a chasm within me, one that for eons of my life has been empty and vast, sprawling lifeless, waiting for that brief breeze to whistle through it,  refreshing its barrenness for just a moment.  Yet somehow, I feel a rushing of something, not only fresh air to blow away the stagnation, but also water, clear and full of life, to bring actual growth to the empty place.

Not every refreshing is easy or simple.  Sometimes there are complexities and challenges that come.  The parched, cracked ground takes time to heal.  So do I.

There is a joy, too, in common battles.  I had some lows this past week, some times where the triggers I'd pushed to the side for days on end came piling all on me at once, leaving me breathless and broken.  Yet it is another opportunity for me to see my brokenness, and as difficult as it is, it brings me closer to my Lord Jesus, because all I can do is weep at His feet knowing that He understands better than any human, even those who have experienced these trials.  And then He sends humans from out of the blue who understand too, and my tender heart is warmed.

I have no more words, for the rest of that in my soul is too rich to find human words to write.