One of Those Days

It's been one of those days.
One of those days when you suck at serving the birdie in gym class while playing badminton and it radiates your failed athletic ability even more.
One of those days when you realize you didn't make the right decision and you make life difficult to try and turn it around.
One of those days when you want to scream to make people understand but then you realize they already know.
One of those days when you're reading a book and it's really good, but then you discover it's values go against yours and you have to put it down.
One of those days when you question everything you know.
One of those days where it's raining and you think "look at the bright side," but the sun isn't even out, so how can you?
One of those days where being a teenager is so discouraging because nothing seems stable and the adults around you seem to try and take over your life.
One of those days when I discover that I have so much further to go in this life, so much to face and so much to learn.
But it's also been one of those days when I was walking down the hallway a little bit earlier than usual and I accidentally bumped into a girl with my books. I look over to apologize. She looks at me and says "Oh, it's okay! I'm Cynthia, It's so nice to meet you!" She shakes my hand. I tell her my name and we talk about what grades we are in. When she turns to go down the stairs she turns to me and says "It was really nice to meet you." She brightened my day and gave me a sun to look at even when it's raining outside.
It was one of those days when Psalm 77: 6, 11-12 was burned to my heart, " I thought about the former days, the years of long ago; I remembered my songs in the night. I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember Your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all Your works and consider all Your mighty deeds."
So I remembered. I remembered His blessings in disguise that came to brighten my days before. I remembered the day my friends and I went outside and drew with chalk in the dead of winter and frolicked around under a blanket. I remember the little four-year-old boy at my church who runs to hug me like I'm the last person on this earth and smiles up at me with the priceless smile he has. The way he prays for his neighbor friend because he wants him to have what he has. How my devo touched on exactly what I needed to read. When I find just the right verse at just the right time. When I get a letter in the mail from my beautiful pen-pal correspondent. When a friend confides in me because they trust me, and I have the opportunity to show Jesus' love back. A memory hits me at full force and I can't help but smile. A prayer request is answered in front of my very eyes. I stand to worship and the reality of God's love overwhelms me and I can only stand in silence.
 It's those blessings that come to shower my memory that make me smile through today. It's those memorable days that remind me they were only right after the days of tragedy. And it's then I recall that God hasn't left me and I can't trust my feelings. And I smile at the beauty God doesn't forget to show me despite the rain. And it's on these days I can see the blessings through the raindrops.

This I Believe

This is an essay I wrote for Creative Writing a couple of months ago and I though I'd share  (:

 

This I Believe

I pleaded with the God I knew existed, with the God I thought I knew everything about, the God I hoped wouldn’t allow pain to sear through my being like a laceration deeper than skin. I prayed, telling myself He would listen to my heart. Convincing myself that if He was the God I thought to know, Death was not around the corner. It was all a nightmare. He would not take a mother from a child the time she needed her most, when my prayers were entwined with silent pleas and selfish bargains.

   Yet when circumstances seemingly got worse, and God seemed all the more silent, I had to redefine the god I created Him to be, into the God He really was.

In my mind He had become the god I prayed simple prayers to. Prayers to help me succeed on a test, not to allow my mother to be sick. He was my Sunday friend and only that.

The jolt of a cancer diagnosis, an earthquake forgetting to end, brought a carefree, brand new teenage girl to her knees. Because it happened to other people. Not me. It threw me onto a thin tightrope with the promise from God, “Don’t look down, Trust me.” Looking down meant falling, it meant denying all I’d learned as a child about the God above.

As I pleaded for healing, a young girl desperately trying to be fluent in prayer so that the God above would hear my silent call, I learned that maybe He had something better. Something concrete to walk on, rather than the unstable ground moving beneath me in the never-ending aftershocks of the earthquake. But my plan had seemed perfect. It made sense, my mother would get better, and we could glorify God with the story to others of the miraculous healing.

My plan was beautiful, I could see it all mapped out before me. I wouldn’t be hurt, she wouldn’t suffer. But God’s was different. He had the blueprints. I did not. The part of my heart He planned to remodel, after it fell apart with an earthquake, was not a room I was willing to surrender. Walls I didn’t want torn down. I had carefully constructed them.

This is what my heart began to believe even when the ground beneath me is threatening to shake with yet another aftershock and the new buildings I try to construct will yet again, collapse.

This I Believe.
   I believe that the broken shards of a tragedy can be beautiful when God’s light shines through. I believe the dark, dusty and cobwebbed crevices of a sinful heart can be ignited when God is the source of their flame. I believe when sifting through the rubble of your heart after a tremor of the earth, you discover the true friends that help you build back up, you find the friend that allows tears to soil their shoulder, and they are so close that they feel some of your pain. I believe God uses the people in your life to provide antiseptics for the gaping wounds that seem to never heal. I believe in an overwhelming peace in a nearly unbearable pain. I believe in a faith slowly reviving through the ruins that loss leaves behind. And most importantly I believe in a holy, omnipresent, and omniscient God, and His sufficient, never-ending love, mercy and grace for a heart that deserves nothing of the kind.

This I Believe.