Today marks one year since I was given a promise.
It isn’t in my nature to be patient and so, over the last year as I have journeyed through every soveriegn trial the Lord has allowed I am glad He remains patient with me.
There have been moments over the last 365 days when I didn’t think I’d heard right; moments where doubt was so loud and my enemy so persistent I felt stupid for even thinking I had heard from the Lord. Other moments I didn’t even know if I wanted the promise.
Those moments are the ones I’m most ashamed of. To allow bitterness in my heart to the point I didn’t know if I wanted what the Lord had promised? How could I not want that?
Then there have been moments where I have ached for the promise; believed it to be true; resolved to see this out to the end the way the Lord sees fit.
I met the sweet moma and sister of Heath today.
I had wanted to have those moments with them since he died but I wasn’t going to force it. It needed to be about them and not about me. That is an incredible lesson I have learned through this year of learning what the closet of pain actually looks like.
His mother hugged me harder than I have been hugged in a long time and as we cried and talked about Heath I was taken aback at the beauty of their grief. It was a ferocious beauty that was painful to behold but it was beautiful nonetheless.
I walked away from that conversation missing him. Remembering the soveriegnty of everything that took place that last Monday night of his life and again, feeling incredibly blessed to have been a part of it all. I was especially blessed by his moma and sister today.
And then I remember that today marks one year since I was given a promise. I have grieved over the promise and in grieving over the promise I have grieved the One Who gave it to me.
This makes me sad. He gave because He trusted and I have grieved Him.
It isn’t in my nature to be patient, so over the next year, whether or not the promise is fulfilled within the next 365 days, it is my prayer that more of my nature would begin to disappear and I would be more longsuffering not only in my patience but also my love.
But above all, I want whatever grief I encounter in my life to be as beautiful on me as it was on the moma who hugged me today and the sister who smiled so big as she remembered her brother. A ferocious beauty that is painful to behold but beautiful nonetheless.
The more I think about it the more I realize it was the hope in their eyes that made their grief beautiful. Hope after a son and brother was murdered? Only God could be the giver of such a hope.
I want that hope to define the next 365 days of my life.
Promise fulfilled or not, hope will define my life.
