Lead, Kindly Light

I should be back in the office right now, doctoring my trial openings, fixing up my direct examinations, making my crosses punchier, and retooling my closings for more masterful performance. But I can’t think of anything else. I just got off the phone with someone just now, and I feel so weak and sad inside. Scared, too, because if this is what love looks like, then I don’t know how close I want to get to it.

All around me, friend after friend is getting engaged. Getting married. Having babies. Most of my days, I’m eagerly awaiting my turn too (at least the first two; will have to wait a while on the third), but conversations like this make my heart catch in my throat, and make me wonder whether I’ve just been lucky to be spared the unlucky trappings and traps that love seems to inevitably bring.

See cuz…you find someone, you think they’re wonderful, and they feel the same thing about you. You do weirdo crazy things for one another (like Pastor Dave mentioned this past Sunday, how he drove 45 minutes over to his then-girlfriend’s house to pick her up and take her around on her paper route at 4 in the morning back in high school), and then you get married cuz you’re in love and all that. But…how come that doesn’t last for some people? What changes? What transpires between “I do, for better or for worse, forever I’ll love you and never forsake you until death do us part” and “You don’t love me”?

As an idealist with edges slowly rusting into a cynicism, I still like to believe that marital love conquers everything–for those lucky enough to find it. But even then… I’ve seen how things like disease and death can get in the way of happily ever after–sometimes at a very young age. And for the rest–well, I just don’t know why so often love can’t last. And it especially is jarring when it looks like it’s operational (and it’s so close to you)–but then you get some chance to blow past the wisp of a facade and you find the truth that lies beneath. And that truth turns out to be pretty yucky-looking, to be quite eloquent about it.

I didn’t know how to comfort the person on the other side of the phone, and I didn’t know what to say. So all I could do was pray with her. And as we knelt in our hearts before Jesus, I felt her pain in my own heart, and I felt the tears just flow and flow and flow. Heh – the screen is still looking a little blurry to me now. Lord Jesus, come rescue us from ourselves because we are so weak and helpless. It’s only by Your mercy that we can make it through this journey of life – and only through faith and strength from You that we can pick up ourselves off the ground and keep walking on…and with joy, too, though sometimes I can’t picture it.

Getting such an up-close view of this broken relationship makes me feel like a vulnerable little child again. I sat in a corner on the ground, as I had done in my loneliest moments when I was young (apparently it’s an instinct that still carries with me today), and I felt small, abandoned, and cold. I know that God is watching and that He is taking care of everything even as I type this with a heavy heart – but oh how I wish He would make all things right – right now. Or at least soon. Rather than knowing that we must instead trudge on in the yuckiness, with only dreams of a better tomorrow.

And what of that tomorrow? Seeing this, hearing about it, being closely acquainted with it for much of my life – makes me hesitate about my own future. I know that it’s better to feel both joy and pain, rather than forego both for fear of the latter. But in this moment, feeling such pain inside, I’d almost prefer to be a statue. Almost.

It’s still “almost” rather than “definitely” because Jesus promises that in this world, we will have trouble–but we ought to take heart, because He has overcome the world (John 16:33). And I believe that’s true — that He has a plan to make all things right, and even in this lifetime, amid the brokenness and hurt – He can create beautiful things out of ashes. So there is still hope. I just pray for a special measure of more hope today, and tonight.

… I feel better now – writing is so therapeutic for me. We’ll see if I can gather enough peace of mind to nail down some more progress on my trials now.