Some days are just awful, and everything that could go wrong does just what you fear it will, and failure eats away at your heart.
You spend all day in the trenches, hoping that if you keep grinding it out, a little sunshine will break through the dark clouds.
But nothing helps.
Quitting seems like the most viable of all possible options.
The awful day whispers in your ear, “Lay it down. Let it go. Give it up.”
Maybe there’s some truth in the hopelessness. A golden thread might be woven in the desperate wish for an end to today.
Because maybe this awful day is just a day. Maybe it will be over soon.
Maybe the wretched sun of today will set and the shining moon will rise and the darkness of night will swallow this defunct experience in failure and time will march on in a different direction tomorrow.
Perhaps you will find that God’s mercies return renewed tomorrow, and apologies will flow like water that quenches your love-thirsty heart.
Then the praise will rise high, laughter will ring out like church bells on a Sunday morning, and the sun will shine again.
Because maybe you are just one person, with flaws and hiccups in your soul, who serves a God with plans to bring you through to glory.
This awful day is just one stop along a grander journey.
And after the day I had yesterday, when I got mad at my kids, and frustrated with my husband, and I forgot that it was costume day at ballet, and my prayers didn’t seem to help us, and my wisdom fell flat, and my phone never stopped ringing, and everyone seemed to need a better version of me than I could muster, I am standing up today and hoping that this is all true.
I lift my head to the hills, where my help comes from. My help comes from The Lord, and He is riding rain clouds into my desert soul.
He is bringing angels with Him and their battle cry to me is one simple word,
HOPE.
Because hope doesn’t fail, even when I do. I look to the cross, and I ponder how hope flows fresh from the complete sacrifice of love.
Pierced hands, a beaten body, and death wrote a story that redefined hope forever.
Maybe happily ever after is real after all, but maybe it looks different than we thought it would.
Today, we fight with hope in our hands. And tomorrow, well, tomorrow is another day of hope in this version of happily ever after…
…even if it looks like it will be just awful.
