officially

if you've read this post and are still here, it's okay. you can stay.

glimpsed: hope

(do you see it?)


( in context)

harbinger.

(redbuds are why i love spring in north carolina.)

...and found?

in the context of a conversation about life after eliza and my current struggles therein, and friend asked me today if it would fit to describe me as "lost."

"lost" according to google:

no longer in your possession or control

confused as to time or place or personal identity

spiritually or physically doomed or destroyed

incapable of being recovered or regained

not caught with the senses or the mind

bemused, deeply absorbed in thought

baffled, perplexed, filled with bewilderment

helpless, unable to function

do i feel out of control, confused, destroyed, bemused, helpless, unable to function? yes and yes. and i can't stand feeling lost. but am i doomed, destroyed, incapable of being recovered or regained? am i, in fact, lost?

i offer this explanation, from a journal entry i wrote a month ago yesterday, before i felt lost or knew i'd feel so:

You know when you turn off the light at night and everything looks completely pitch-black because your eyes haven't adjusted to the dark yet, and even though you can't see a thing you can flop down in precisely the right spot on your bed because you know exactly where it is because that's where it has always been despite the fact that you can't see it at all? Yeah, that's kind of how it is.

am i lost because my bedroom is pitch-black and my eyes haven't focused yet? no, i could never be lost in my own bedroom, finding my way to my own bed.

do i "see" God, can i find my moorings right now, when my eyes, my heart have yet to adjust to the change in landscape since eliza died? no. but does that mean that i'm lost, that He isn't where He's always been? no. just like my bed hasn't moved even though my eyes can't see it, neither has God left me in the dark because my heart can't see Him.

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord; I want to see You.

if not

First Lord, All's Well That Ends Well, IV.3, Wm. Shakespeare

“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whip'd them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherish'd by our virtues."