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?