A Blue Day

Today is a blue day. I just woke up that way. It happens.

I was looking on facebook and saw that one of my college friends has been redecorating a room in her house to get ready for a baby. My throat catches as I click through pictures of a lovely country house, a real garden, smiling relatives...

Sometimes the pressure of all the millions of things I want to do and ought to be doing pushes down on my chest so hard and all I can do is cry and hope no one else sees how messed up I am.

But who the heck am I to be whining about my stillborn plans when the world is positively falling apart? People's hearts are disintegrating around me, and I'm upset because I want somebody else's white picket fence. I asked God a long time ago to use me however He saw fit.

A little over a year ago, I started following a blog written by a woman whose husband was in a terrible accident. Reading about all the challenges she faces as her husband slowly recovers from a brain injury, I am constantly awed by the strength and the grace and the wisdom that has grown in this woman's heart. But it scares me, because it reminds me how far God is willing to go, how much He will put us through, to grow good things in us. The things we cherish are not always valued in the same way by the One who views things from eternity. I can't cling to anything, anything at all, except Him.

What options do I have, really? I could try to run away, pretend it's not important, bury myself in the prettiest lies I can find--or spin some for myself. I could go watch tv. I suppose I could try to fight God... but that makes just about as much sense as shutting myself in the freezer.

Nope. The only thing to do now is to go ahead and have my little cry, and then take a deep breath and say, "Okay, what's next?"

And trust that this journey is worth the cost.

I have a feeling that the finished product is going to be beautiful.