limited

I’ve been sick and sleeping a lot today. And life has been a whirlwind recently. Maybe being sick is divine providence…I need to take it easy. In that case, yes, I will take two naps in one day after sleeping ten hours. Sounds good to me. Except for the fact that I keep falling asleep and waking up to different thoughts and worries and stresses…part of me just wants to stay asleep for a long time.

It’s my roommate and her boyfriend’s six-month anniversary. Time is a funny thing, I’m beginning to realize. I have been thinking about how things have changed over time recently. Let’s go back to six months ago…oh right. Gingers and zoos and awkwardness. Yeah..uh..let’s go a bit further…

Ok, one year ago. Oh, right…I was deciding whether I had feelings for this boy or not…and this boy happens to be the one celebrating his six-month with my roommate. Life.

Maybe we’ll just stick to the present. I’m sitting here about to go to bed at 10:30, sniffling and coughing and wishing this apple cider would never end, and that life wouldn’t have just slapped me in the face with a cold wet rag of reality.

Ok, well, apparently I don’t want to be in any time zone right now. But I’m stuck in this one, so we’ll go with this.

Confession time? The other day I broke down in a piano practice room. I told Him I was sick of Him telling me “No.” Every time, that was His answer. No. And I would catch myself staring at Him with my mouth gaping open in shock, then slowly, very slowly, nod my head in agreement. Ok, if You say so…ok.

But I didn’t want to just go with it anymore. I wanted a yes. For once, a yes. I am so done with getting over unrealized dreams and letdown hopes over and over again. So done with thinking that maybe…this one might be that yes…but no. Not this time. And not the next time.

And forget about the next one.

I was angry, guys. Legitimately angry. And I haven’t been angry like that in a long time.

But I remember a year ago. And the confusion and wondering that went along with that. I remember six months ago, that awful, terrible week. And I’m still here now. It didn’t overtake me. I’m here, and I’m not just existing. I’m better. I’m wiser. Stronger. Somehow trusting Him more…though it doesn’t make sense that I would trust the One that has kept telling me no. And someday, I’ll remember tonight and its reality check.

Life moves on. We think we cannot handle what’s thrown at us, but we somehow do. We wake up, we smile because we have a hope far more elaborate than any five-year plan, far more meaningful than a wedding ring, and even richer than the fullest bank account. There is a Strength coursing through our veins that gets us through, right into our heart. Making it larger, deeper, more sensitive to His Presence—not despite our circumstances, but because of them.

Life is far from figured out. It is anything but figured out. And sometimes the No’s sting and all we want is just one Yes and it takes everything in us to believe that He is not holding out on us. And we want to scream and cry and kick and beg Him to please stop all of this, give up, relent. It is too much, Lord. It cannot be worth it.

And we feel this desperation and overwhelming emotion, naming it weariness or hopelessness. But what if this feeling is more than that? What if this great heaviness we are feeling in our darkest circumstances isn’t a lack of strength or the desire to give up? What if this feeling is simply the vast, immense, earth-shattering, heart-wrenching, thirst-quenching, overwhelming, far-reaching, never-ending, enveloping, inescapable Love of Jesus?

We are sharing in His loneliness, abiding in His sufferings, remaining in His rejections, and we are sopping wet, drenched in His love, not even realizing that this feeling is not loneliness or suffering or rejection. It is the Love that we cannot even comprehend enough to realize what it is.

No, I will not relent, I hear Him say. His love is too involved to just stop, too optimistic to give up, and too full to let us make room for the little prizes we attempt to hold onto.

So six months from now. Who knows where I will be. Hopefully not at the zoo. I may be dancing in the Yes I finally got, or sipping my apple cider, somberly and gratefully realizing why He said No.

But I know one thing. Six months from now I will be drenched in a Love that pierces through doubt, disbelief, pessimism, and shame. A Love that envelopes the happiest and poorest of men. A Love that will not relent, even when I beg it to.

That’s a thought to fall asleep to. And a hope to make me want to wake up again.