The Darkness

I’ve been reading the book of Isaiah lately. It’s one of those books that isn’t so easy to swallow, and yet it makes total sense to me in this season. I feel a little like the Israelites. I feel wounded and broken, bruised, just lost in the valleys of life. I often feel like God has just turned His back on me, like He’s done what He can to destroy me and has just left me in it.

And yet, this is what I am reading and learning. Though God wounds, He also heals. He’s sovereign. He doesn’t leave us in the pain forever, but instead He makes a new way for us. And He leads us to places of rest and healing, He leads us out of the desert into a place filled with life.

I must confess, it’s not the easiest truth to deal with.

We all want a God Who just does what we want Him to, who just blesses our life, gives us all the good things and takes away the bad. I wish I could say that’s who God is, but it’s not. Our God is sovereign. Our God’s ways are not like ours. And as painful as it is, we have to trust Him through that. We have to trust Him even when He allows hurt, and allows pain, and breaks us apart.

I’m not going to lie, I’ve had some days of wanting to give up on God lately. It’s not that I think because I have Him that life should just be perfect. But there are so many moments where enough is enough. Where 5 years of darkness is more than I can handle and I just want out. I want out of the pain. I want out of the suffering. I want out from a relationship with this God Who just gives and takes away, Who does whatever the hell He pleases with seemingly no consideration for how it’s going to break me.

But I know I can’t do this without Him. I know that even when I don’t see Him or feel Him or hear Him, He is what gets me through every single day. He is Who holds me while I cry. He is still Who I cry out to when I don’t even have the strength to get out bed anymore.

I don’t pretend to have any answers. I know so many people who are just going through the trenches of life lately. Who, like me, have had not just a horrible season, but a really hard few years. I don’t know why. I don’t know if and when it will get better. All I know is that one day, everything will be perfect. And God’s sovereignty will make sense in a way it never has before. And we’ll be able to see through the eyes of His Love, why He allows things that He could stop, or He could change.

He doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t know how to trust His heart always. Sometimes I don’t even want to, I don’t have hope and I don’t want anything to do with Him. But still, I read His promises in this book of Isaiah, and I choose to believe that someday, that will be me. That though He has wounded time and time again, He will heal. Though my heart feels unfixable, I choose to trust that one day it will be whole. No, I don’t think that day will come this side of heaven. This side of Heaven will always hold struggle and trials and everything else. But when I get there, when I meet this God face to face, I will know and be known. I will be whole, and there will be no more darkness.

That is the one truth I will hold on to through it all.