Pushing through the darkness

“Further seems forever, until you’ve seen, until you get there. Until you feel a promise land beneath your feet. But there’s a reason for the journey, there is purpose in the learning and not everything in life comes naturally. No, not everything in life comes easily, but we’re getting there.” -Steffany Gretzinger, Getting There

Hello friends. Welcome to a place where I am processing how to press into the mess of life with exuberant hope that we will come out on the other side. Photography and now blogging has evolved out of a need to press in and give myself a nice hard shake to acknowledge the beauty that is in each moment. I am 28 years old and the daily grind of life has already started taking a toll, but praise that it does not have to.

These last 3 years of being a speech-language pathologist have been joyful, exhausting, and humbling. I have had the privilege of helping patients talk and swallow again after a traumatic brain injury, stroke, cancer, or disease process. It is heavy work to watch, on repeat, the story of something as precious as eating and talking be taken away, and life as it once was be suddenly lost.

I have wrestled with that concept over the last 6 months—losing what once was. Questioning why. Why the loss? Why does there have to be a loss, because loss is terribly, terribly painful. I have been at the brink of exhaustion with it all, wondering how in the world my small part to play will make a difference. I have seen family members walk through the hardship of caring for their loved one, losing all sense of independence for everyone involved. I have seen the depression that occurs when your ability to walk, remember, or use your hand has been taken away. I have seen patients suffer from cancer and eventually pass away and wondering how in the world do we find joy in this?

I am on this journey of figuring out how to hold joy and sorrow at the same time. To acknowledge the brokenness that permeates this world and is ever present and overwhelming. To wrestle with the pain and heartache of caring for people who may or may not get better. In the song quoted above by Steffany Gretzinger, “getting there”, there is a line that says, “Your presence is the promise”.

Your presence is the promise. This struck me. Hard. To be honest, I have been angry. Angry that the struggle is so real, and so hard. So the sentence, “your presence is the promise” is simple, yet so powerful. Because we were not promised anything but the presence of God. We were promised his presence. Period. And that presence has the power to heal, redeem, and restore the heartache that is experienced with loss. Darkness has not won. Every moment that I have been filled with sorrow and grief can be met with a joy that can be held simultaneously. If I have learned anything about grief in the last 2 months, it’s that it will be there, it can’t be dropped, but we can learn to hold grief in one hand and joy in the other. They are not mutually exclusive, and the presence of God truly is the only salve that provides healing.

We’re on our way. So welcome in, friend, to this fight to push back the darkness and point you to Jesus in the midst of the chaos that seems to surround us.