an ocean of sorrow

All Sons and Daughters have a song that begins like this:

Feels like an ocean of sorrow is under my skin.

I have never heard truer words. Wrapped underneath all interweavings of skin, trapped in the structure built by my bones and the pathways that are my veins is an ocean of sorrow. An entire ocean, filled with tidal waves and storms is flowing under my skin. It ebbs and it flows and I feel emotion I do not understand. I wonder if I have the capacity to hold these emotions that threaten to explode out of my skin. Just one touch seems as if it will break me open and I will bleed out, my life source gone. 

And as I sit in this cafe, I see oceans of joy, rivers of happiness, forests of melancholy living under the skin of these people. Behind their eyes, as they sit alone, working on things that have captured their attention, share their hearts with people who have stolen their attention, or dream about being in cafes far from here, in distant cities, looking out at streets that are not their own. 

These stories capture me. They invite me on a journey far outside of my own. Into lives that are apart of something bigger. Something far more extravagant than this life I am currently living. 

Because I have been in those distant cities. I have dreamed those far-off dreams. I've been there. The capacity of our human hearts is exponential. 

The core longing of our hearts is that things would make sense. That we would be able to look back at our lives and see a tapestry of beauty. To say that each thread was intentionally woven, each word articulated perfectly, each person a gift. 

But the truth is, words fail. Tears burst out at the wrong time, laughter fills us when we should mourn, people hurt us and break us and they don't say the words we need them to say. Our longings are not met and into our tapestry ends up ugly threads.

I'm only 22 though. I have seen the sun shine on the other side of the world. I have met people who have not been more than 10 miles from their home. I have met people who have experienced loss in the deepest places. I have met people who have encountered joy to the fullest. I have stared up at stars questioning the meaning of my life and wondering about the depths of my pain. I am here and it is hard. There is an ocean of sorrow under my skin. Everything is a disaster, most things are falling apart, none of my tapestries is weaved. Forgotten it has become tangled, a mess I wonder if it could ever be undone. 

Feels like an ocean of sorrow is under my skin.

The very next verse says this, 

but even the ocean eventually meets with the sand. 

Eventually, the sorrow will end, I will encounter joy. Eventually, my life that is undone, my sorrow that is volcanic, my anger that is steady will meet an avalanche of hope. I don't have it all together. The people in this coffee shop don't have it together. But the hope of this song is that Jesus has it all together.  He holds the world in his hands. I get it. I know.

But the ocean of sorrow is still under my skin.

How do I reconcile His goodness and His kindness with this ocean that is a hurricane? That threatens to tear through the very core of my being?
This good, good Father that I have come to know has touched my heart in deep and beautiful ways. I can feel His presence, here. I can see him moving and I fall in worship before Him.
But how does this chaos make sense next to His beauty?

surrender.

My fingers wrapped tightly around this place I've called home. I am clinging desperately to the ones I love, fashioning intricate plans of healing and redemption for their hurting souls. Only now am I coming to realize the fallacies in my words, the failure that has married my attempts at rescue.

Because I wanted to be Jesus.

Not God, not the name above every other name. But I wanted to do what He could do. I wanted to fix people. I wanted to bring healing. I wanted to orchestrate lives together. 

The hard part was this gift he has given me; the gift of feeling. I feel it all so deeply. I feel the pain of my friends, the struggle of my family, the heartache of those around me. 

With that gift, I wanted to bring change.

But I am not Jesus.

I remember the first time I realized I had this gift and I wanted to throw it away immediately. I was in Nicaragua. I had worn myself out in the day playing in a trash dump with children. We handed them food and there wasn't enough. They told us to be careful in the dump, but I got down in the trash with this sweet little girl and I held her. My Spanish was borderline nonexistent. I had nothing to offer her but a sandwich and the willingness to sit in the trash with her. I decided to make her smile. It was my goal. 

But that night, as we sang to Jesus, something in me broke. I cried and I cried because this little girl was never going to hear about Jesus from me. I was a temporary fix for a lifelong problem. She was sitting in that trash and I would leave to my safe bed. She was playing in that trash with dirt smeared on her face and I would shower. She was stuck there and I had freedom. 

Jesus, how is this fair? I cried for her because I felt her pain. I felt the pain that she would experience growing up in nothing. 

I wanted to be Jesus. 

Because my heart felt like He didn't do something. Was He going to do anything for this sweet girl who desperately needed love, who desperately needed to hear Jesus? And that was the first time I felt someone else's pain. And since then, I've entered this world where I feel so deeply and I am to give it to Jesus and pray for these people. But sometimes, I just don't want it. I don't want it because I don't pray. I don't want it because I try to be the doctor of these wounds, the author that writes happily ever afters into these stories. 

His voice is clear, he whispers surrender. Surrender. Jesus, really? You know it's easier to hold this. How do I surrender when these gifts I have I sometimes don't want? How do I surrender when these dreams I have were not what I first started dreaming of? He says to let go of the old me. But the old me was me. It was everything I knew. Everything that made sense. 

He's a God that doesn't make sense. And His plan is far more marvelous than mine could ever be.

I am not Jesus.

Jesus is asking for far more than I ever wanted to give. But he has given me everything, how can I not give him all of me? I was nothing, and now I am his. I have belonging. He has called me by name and written it on the palm of His hand. The gifts he has given me are good. The life he has given me is His. 

So I surrender. 

I surrender to this Jesus who has given me everything, who has wrapped me in his loving arms and held me close, who has promised good out of terrible things, who has turned sorrow into joy and tragedy into a garden. I am not Jesus and that is good. I don't want to be Jesus, I just want to take these gifts he has given me to learn to be like him. So that in my weakness, he can be known. In my chaos, calm will be seen. In my fears, peace will overflow. In my broken, testimony will be heard. 

So I release these fingers that are tightly wound around this life. The good, the bad, the gifts, the talents, the passions, the joys, the sorrows, the material things, my thoughts, and feelings. Everything. I release everything to Him because He is the Giver of every good and perfect gift and what He takes He can restore infinitely. I give it all to Him because He surrendered first, he laid down His life first. He gave Himself first. 

So I surrender, just like Jesus. 

Psalm 31:5, 19

Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.

Oh, how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you.