Little Glimmers

It is still incredibly dark around here. I feel like I am mostly overcome and overwrought by the oppression of it. Yet, every now and then, I just get the faintest glimmer. I can't even put my finger on it. I don't know what triggers them. Part of me wonders if it just clicks on when people are in the midst of prayer for us. I am not really sure. But they are there.

At some point in the past couple of days, I just began to feel the tiniest bit lighter. There have been times in the past few days when I have been able to stop and realize that just a couple of moments have flown by where I was not overrun with the ache of pain, loss and rejection. It is almost as though I have forgotten or been transported back several months to a time and place that held so much more hope and so much less pain. And then it all hits me again, but that is okay. Be it ever so brief, I had a glimmer. And when it all hits me again, it doesn't hit quite as hard. I don't start crying every time I think of it and I don't always feel like my world is ending anymore.

Somewhere, there is hope. It is almost a freedom. It is as if I am realizing that there really is promise. Maybe it is all sinking in, finally, slowly, painfully. As layer upon layer of my old life is stripped away from me and I realize all that I am losing, I begin to see how much there might be to gain. So many hypotheticals but many of them carry some semblance of promise. I lose my home, I find a cheap room to rent and gain some financial freedom, I lose my husband but gain the opportunity to fall in love with someone else, someone who CHOOSES to love me the way that Jesus does, someone who wants to partner with me in ministry and parenthood, I lose my job, I go back to school full-time and find myself doing something else that I love and am passionate about.

Who really knows what life is going to look like 5 years from now? I could still be married to Will, in this house, having more kids, experiencing the marriage we have always wanted. I could be a single mom, living on a fixed income and relying on the generosity of others to help me get through, I could be remarried, I could be delivering babies... I just have no idea what journey I am on. But I am grateful right now for the little, tiny, miniscule glimmers of hope. I am beginning to not only see but maybe, finally, be feeling now that God is going to weave this all together into a beautiful masterpiece. For the first time in a long while, I am no longer dreading what it might all look like.

I am grateful for glimmers in the heaviness of the dark around me.