shattered hearts

this is something i wrote a few weeks ago. not really completely about me, but not really not about me either.

Shattered hearts.

If I’m fully honest, I confess that I prefer to balance somewhere between spiritual safely and spiritual securely—between being just Christian enough not to go to hell and just bad enough to not stand out as so righteous that God would find it necessary to send afflictions my way. Because, “many are the afflictions of the righteous” and, God knows, I do not want bad days. In the safely of bright church lights and soft sermons I might say I do, but I don’t. When I am truly honest, I want comfort and normality and typical situations. I do not willfully send invitations for pain to come my way.
I like to believe that God builds a strong, mighty, powerful fortress around my emotional self—protecting, guiding, shielding, strengthening my heart to safely co-exist with other safe hearts. I proclaim that my God is a protector and a shield. He is a strong fortress and he absolutely holds me double fisted in his great grip.
Sometimes, in his unusual grace, God throws our hearts to the wolves. This truth, this idea, this invariable reality I can’t imagine he expects us to fathom. How could he? We could never really wrap our minds around it. He is our safety but he is not safe.
He sometimes tosses our hearts out to be eaten alive by pain and suffering because he is wise beyond the moment and far kinder than our immediate pain. His love songs come often in deep inarticulate murmurs that shake and rattle and convulse us to the core.
He throws us into pain—he throws us straight into the stinging pain. He allows it. Then he lovingly picks up the pieces. Other times he holds us in firm arms where grace can wrap around our broken hearts like a cast. The miracle is this grace. This magical, medicinally healing grace moves into our brokenness and creates incomprehensible joy. The shattered heart can unexpectedly dance again only because of this unusual grace.
If any of us dare question God, which I suspect we all do in the darkness of our private prayers, we challenge him. “How dare you!” We throw the pain back in his face, we ask him “why”, but the question in itself is insufficient. We ask him, “why me why now why this?” We throw the questions around but the words can never quite articulate the sting we feel. All we can do is point, mute and sobbing, to our shattered hearts.
We pile up our tears and our sorrow and our fresh wounds and throw them back at God giving him an impossible ultimatum—either You are punishing me because I am evil or You hate me because You are evil.
But we know it is neither. He cannot be either of those things.

God is love. He is goodness. He is faithfulness. He is peace. He is hope. He is sustenance and salvation.

He must be. He is. He is.

And our shattered hearts will dance again.

awkward

awkwardly i'm still where i was 8 months ago. i just celebrated my 8 month anniversary of being post-korea, stuck-in-this-funky-funk-life. i never saw that coming.

so, here's to change. hoping and praying it'll come soon.
it can't come fast enough.