Time looms large...

 I was running today, trying to sort out my heart.

Not an easy job.

The running or the sorting.

It seems harder today. Here lately. Most recently. Harder than it ever has been. 

Sorting out my heart. Not the running. 

The new year. Full of time. Unknown and unsorted time. 

Time looms large...

As I was cooling down, I walked under one of my favorite trees. I looked up a lot at the sky today, for a lot of reasons I'm sure. One reason was the absence of my beloved clouds. After what seems like a dark and gloomy winter so far, it felt good to see the nearly cloudless blue sky. 

But my poor tree. 

It looks like this in the spring:

I felt so encouraged this past spring. So hopeful. I quickly made this picture into a screen saver.

{I do love me some cheese}

But I believed it. I felt it. It was spring and everything was new and happy and so...

promising

This is my beloved tree today: 

I mean, it's just sad. It looks prettier here than it really is. It's... 

dead

Or it looks dead.

I feel like that tree.

Sort of dead inside. The hope is dead. The fire is dead. I feel like a hibernating animal, burrowed deeply in the snow, tucked in, waiting for spring. 

And I love winter. This isn't about the season. It's about me.

Hope has flickered out.

And I spent my run trying to figure out why. 

I have way too much in my life to be thankful for to be morose about anything. 

I know that. 

I think this really is about death. Not real, physical death. The other kind.

I learned a lot about this from Elisabeth Elliot. And she learned a lot about this from Lilias Trotter. 

In nature, so much of the beauty and growth depends on dying. The dying and falling off of the bloom. The dying and falling of the fruit. Nature is full of this dying and blooming and dying and blooming.

You can even look at a branch on a tree and see how many cycles of this kind that the branch has cycled through. 

There is a knot at each place where it died and grew again.

I feel that deeply in my soul. Each time the Lord has pruned me, something in me has died. Thankfully it's most always something that needed to go: a deeper grasp on pride or judgement of others, a level of fear and anxiety, a removal of something temporal I cling to instead of Him, my instance of getting my way... The list could go on and on. 

These things, and more, need to go. And I see that He works all things in my life together to bring about this sanctification. The knots stay and I remember. I remember each time the Lord wrestled from my childish, selfish grasp; something that needed to go. And I'm thankful. 

And that's good.

But sometimes I also lose something valuable. Something precious. I lose hope. I lose trust. I lose my way just a little. I feel a tiny bit like Job, 

Though you slay me...

(Lilias Trotter says, "“Do not be dismayed if the first answer to some of your prayers is a revelation, not of the power of God to make alive, but of his might to slay every hope outside himself.”)

And that's what I feel today. I feel a little lost. And definitely without hope. I feel a little slayed. 

So I made a new cheesy screensaver:

Because it's true. No matter whether I can see what He's doing or feel correctly about anything He's doing or whether or not I can actively trust Him, He's still faithful. And I know that there is much more to this verse and much more to do and think and feel, but...

I know all the right things to think and say. But for now when I feel a little lost and a little alone and a little scared about how He keeps pushing me forward when I'm really tired and just want to rest for awhile, it's good to know that He's still faithful. 

I guess my tree and I are both getting ready for spring.