When breakthrough doesn't come

 

I press my ear to the coarse wood and listen. I run my fingers down the streaked, blue paint and wait. Only a doorway stands between yesterday and tomorrow. 

There's an invitation to come in. 

To turn the knob and move.

To have...faith.

Faith in a 'good' tomorrow with a good God.

But, comfort and hate dance in unison on this side of the door. It's the writhing, sickness that has plagued for a decade. It's every day that my mind says that life will never be pretty again. That it's always going to be sticky.

Sticky, like a fresh-coat of partially dried, blue paint. 


I want God to open the door. To physically come down, scoop up my hurting body, and walk me through to safety. To plant me on His side of the door, where sickness doesn't live and tears don't stain faces. To tell me that I won't hurt anymore.

There is movement on the other side of the door.

People moving with ease through this life.


How do you forget pain that is so tangible? So in your face every day? The type of pain that strangles and chokes out life?

You don't. 
You can't.

"You can't fully live today, with a foot in yesterday, and a fear of tomorrow."

You run your fingers down the streaked, blue paint and you wait. You wait for Christ to come and dry the streaks from your cheeks.

On this side of the door, miracles still happen.
On this side of the door, perseverance blossoms into peace in the strangest ways.
On this side of the door, Jesus comes down, scoops up our hurting bodies, and walks with us through the fire.

"But now, this is what the LORD says-- he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze." 

Isaiah 43:1&2

When we focus on our failures

I've been looking the other way. For months. At what point does a writer quit scribbling in journals? Quit tapping words into blank spaces? Even now, I can barely make these fingers move. I sat for ten minutes just waiting to open my online home. Why?

Somewhere along the way I told myself that this blog was an utter failure.

That no one was reading. That I was too busy. That the change I thought could take place in people's lives by seeing life in a different way, a way I hoped to show people through my writing, wasn't happening.

Ironically, this sticky place has occurred in the most interesting time of my life, when helping others write has actually become my career. A career I love.

For the longest time, I asked God if I was a writer.

"Do you really want me to write?" 
"Will anyone even care about what I say?"
 "Will they just see me or will they really see You?


After a while, I quit listening to His answer and answered for myself.

"No, no one is listening. No one cares. No, you are not a writer."

And for six months, I have actually been dream grieving. In the six months that I have taken off from writing, a piece of me withered. This morning, I decided to look up. And to pick up my hands and write. I wrote despite my feelings.


I wrote about a crazed pixie Senior who wanted to beat me up when I was a freshman in high school. I wrote about love never realized, and another never meant to be. I wrote about school dances and being a gosh darn Sasquatch as I watched everyone get a slow dance but me. Okay, okay, a pity party of school dances past- I know, I know.  I wrote a partial script. A scrap of a book series.

The point is, I wrote. As I wrote, my words blossomed. And this withered flower drank in a little piece of freedom. Freedom from the fear of failure and all its' thug friends.

When we focus on our failures, we freeze.