Friday, October 25, 2013

Blisters

Disclaimer: I don't know if this even makes sense but I am going to say it regardless and hopefully someone out there will be able to follow and trace my twisting thoughts.

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This has been banging around in my head for a week or so but I wasn't exactly sure how to say it, and in actuality I'm still not exactly sure how to say it...so why am I saying it at all? I'm not quite sure of that either...anyways...

I was sitting eating a jazz apple the other day when I noticed hard blisters on my fingers. Blisters that had been brought into being because calluses were taking shape and they weren't particularly pretty.

I'm told this is what happens when you play guitar, cello, violin or any other stringed instrument. The strings, hours of practicing, and friction do their due diligence...and now the tips of my fingers aren't as soft and pretty anymore. They are a little bit more worn, harder, and tougher...but the notes from my violin sound much better now, cleaner and brighter.

I feel like my life has been like that, especially in the last few years. I'm not as soft, naive, and innocent as the lanky barefooted girl that I use to be. My life is messier, I've made lots of big mistakes, I've wandered off the path and found myself in deep ravines many, many times. My heart has a few more cracks as well as a few more holes and my edges have gotten a little rougher. ...but because of all this I think I am able to play brighter notes. The music I play with my life is deeper and more substantial. The notes ring truer after pain just as the gold shines with that much more radiance after the dross has been consumed by the fire.

The light seems brighter because of the darkness. Dawn seems particularly precious after a stormy night.

After you've swallowed a few draughts of despair, you savor sweet hope a little more.

Could the pain, loneliness and heartbreak that we experience cause the notes of our life to ring brighter? Could it really be that He is making all things new?

If this is true, let us be grateful for it all, for at the very root of joy is gratitude and at the bottom of gratitude is a childlike trust in the love of a God who is weaving all these things together for good.

Give thanks for the joy and the sorrow, the bright laughter and the salty tears, for our friends and our enemies, for the victories as well as the defeats, the acceptances as well as the rejections. Because when you start to give thanks for every blasted moment of grace, you begin to realize that every moment is grace.

Let us give thanks for everything that has brought us to this present moment clinging to the knowledge that one day soon we will see in every twist and turn the guiding hand of loving Father.

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