When clouds seem to hover…

Have you ever had a season in your life (either long or short lived) when you felt like you just could not make sense of the world around you? Like everything swirling around you was just too big to grasp? Maybe you have heard a bit of bad news & then more follows. Or you get a good report at the doctor only to be followed by something else going awry a few weeks later. It could even be as simple as not understanding why your heart feels the way it does & why it hurts so badly.

Honestly, this has been my story this summer.

I’ve sat down numerous times to be inspired to offer a little “hope at home” through this space…however, it’s as if the words were just not there. I’ve had many ideas come to mind of what I would like to write about & yet I could not get it out.

I share this because I want you to know that I hurt. I see & feel pain. I ache. I long for more.

People, both friends & family, in my life whom I love deeply are hurting for a variety of reasons. Some are more “serious” than others & yet they all provoke the same emotion:

Longing.

I have relationships that need mending. Health concerns under my own roof that always seem hang over my head. A house that just won’t sell in a town where we don’t live. Plus, I seem to get news just about everyday of someone else’s shattered circumstance.

As silly & immature as it seems, I  sometimes want to just attempt to wave a wand over it all & hope that it all goes away. But we all know that’s not how this life works.

We ache for healing in this world. For deep, real connection with other souls & our Creator. We recognize that something is just not right here. We are never satisfied. We want & want & want. It’s driven into us & it even comes out of our very nature…

I see this ever so often in my 3 year old son, Grady. He has just realized in the past few weeks really, since he began the new adventure of preschool, what else is out there for him! He sees what his buddies have for lunch & comes home to tell me what was missing from his lunch that I packed half awake while feeding the dog & trying to not wake up his little brother in the process. He is not satisfied when I allow a TV show or two & then firmly share that it’s time to turn off the TV when it ends. He responds at times with a stomp & scowl, which leads to a heart to heart of course. He has even started grabbing a few items off the $1 bin at Target recently, expecting to go home with something, when we just ran in for a quick errand to pick up some paper towels & milk. He fully believes he is entitled to this toy. He shared with me just today that he got very angry in his class because people would not stop talking when he wanted them to do so.  I did not teach him these things (well, sadly I’m sure I have modeled these behaviors in different ways), & yet he still has this: longing for more.

We all do.

So where does it come from & what do we do with it?

I think something that has given me great comfort and peace as I’ve wrestled with this longing in my heart is that the longing itself was given to us by our Creator. God created us to enjoy Him & each other in this beautiful world in which we live. If you look all the way back to the Garden of Eden in Genesis you see that Adam & Eve were naked, unashamed, with no fear. As soon as the snake entered & tempted creation to choose knowledge over trust in their Creator, we fell. Sin entered the world. Another way of explaining Sin is simply being separated from God. So we were connected & all was well. We chose to step away from that connection & brokenness entered. If I were in the garden that day, I am confident I would have made the same choice. I do it everyday. So that’s pretty hopeless really if we stop there in the Story. Our Story.

Fortunately our Story continues, when our Creator, who knows the number of hairs on our head & everything about us & loves us anyway , chose to send His only Son, Jesus, to die a torturous death on a cross on a hill. When he rose again from the tomb & the stone was rolled away, our Story was enabled to continue. We were given the chance to choose again. To choose either separation from the One who made us OR to choose life to the full, both here on earth & after our bodies fail, by believing in the power of Jesus’ death & resurrection to reconnect us to our Father.

That’s where my hope lies. That’s the only source of our “hope at home” ! It’s true. I could write on a million topics of “how to’s” with coping with life’s trials, particularly dealing with a parent/spouse with a life threatening illness. I will do that in this space as well.

But the ultimate HOPE I can share with each of you & remind myself of…. is that that this longing we have for more, whatever circumstance we find ourselves to be in in this season of life, is only going to be truly satisfied in our Creator!