After Sunset

When I am at home in Fergus Falls, when the tangerines and lavendars of a setting sun escape into the corners and the navy cape is cast on the sky, I can't but help and sit. I often wonder if this is God's way of giving us closure, like a door shutting on a successful day or an uneventful day, reminding us of our next chance tomorrow.

There were distinct times in the past that I have felt like God would cause a part of my life to set, while bringing a new vision, new experiences my way, kind of like a sunrise. Whether that looks like a new job, new classes or school, new relationships, or a new place to live, they usually come in pairs or multiples. But when surveying this typical run of my life, a question usually surfaces - what happens between the sunset and the sunrise?

Night.

The night is not always a comfortable place. It is hard to see, hard to think, sometimes even hard to keep going. You don't see your progress because your eyes need light to look back, to look forward, to look around with each step.

I am in night today. Unemployment, depleting financial flow (well, okay, NO flow), a possible move, relationship statuses that are wobbly, ongoing pressures from parental figures, assisting the various people in my life with their much larger struggles, and just trying to make ends meet - these are some componenets of my night.

My night seems to be so dark sometimes that I just want to drop to the ground below and lay there for a few weeks, while other days, when I get sick of wallowing in the unsure, I just want to sprint to find the inkling of a sunrise. I hear people say, "keep trusting" or "have faith," and I love those phrases, but they seem so cliche' in times like these. It is like giving the same loaf of bread to the hungry, when maybe all they want is something different, like a bagel or an english muffin.

I just crave hope, but a different type of hope. A hope that changes things, not my attitude, maybe not even my circumstances, but a hope that is real and alive and can keep me walking steadily through the dark, knowing that light may just be a couple steps ahead. A BREATHING hope.

A few months ago, I found this quote by Helen Keller. Her darkness, literal in a couple ways, brings about hope, living and breathing hope. It is through the darkness, the "rude awakenings" that we discover a new chance to appreciate things.

We need limitations and temptations to open our inner selves, dispel our ignorance, tear off disguises, throw down old idols, and destroy false standards. Only by such rude awakenings can we be led to dwell in a place where we are less cramped, less hindered by the ever-insistent External. Only then do we discover a new capacity and appreciation of goodness and beauty and truth. --Helen Keller

I am not sure where I am. Whether I am only steps from the sunrise or barely a foot from the sunset. And although this may not be the case tomorrow, I will keep walking. Lamentations 3 breathes:

I remember my affliction and my wandering,

the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,

and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind

and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;

therefore I will wait for him."