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How to have a truly happy new year.

For the first time in years, I don’t remember my New Year’s resolution from January. Usually, I write it down in my journal or on a note I stick to my mirror. There’s been many of those dog-eared sticky notes from years past. The year of contentment. Speaking life. We passed pancakes across the breakfast table on January 1st this year. “What do you want from 2018?” I can’t remember my answer. I know what I didn’t want though. I didn’t want to walk into her office and share the parts of my life I’m inclined to hide. I didn’t want to Facetime her the day after she delivered her baby that never breathed. I didn’t want to spend four months wondering how I’d walk into her house on Christmas day and see her empty chair. I didn’t want to go on another first date that led nowhere. We sit across from each other in a little coffee shop in Colorado, picking at a charcuterie board. “When I think about all of the things I have left to go through,” her voice cracks....

When You're Looking for the End of the Tunnel

It’s one of those weeks when life is pulled taut before me for months on end, stretch marks revealing the stress of its’ weight. Fixing my eyes on the light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t do any good when the end of the tunnel is nowhere in sight. I realize I’m running on empty; my tank of joy and courage is dried up. Stress does that if you let it. It grabs your mind in its’ iron grip and squeezes it empty of God.  
            
I’m pacing and trying to grasp at prayers I really mean. He slips a sentence into my jumbled mind: “In thy presence is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11). Maybe we need to stop looking for the end of exams, the end of our job, and the end of our grief. Maybe we need to look to the Light that is in our winding, endless tunnel.

The brighter future is sometimes just a mirage. That’s why each moment is for living in His presence where joy outruns the train of our anxious thoughts. 

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