"We write to discover this broken hallelujah. Life is a battle, and all victories are bittersweet. We sing our victory songs covered in muck and blood and desperation, down on both knees. The broken hallelujah is pain and resolution in one. When sung together, we catch a glimpse of a long, tumultuous story—the story of humanity—unpleasant but glorious." -Kellen Gorbett

I haven't felt like this in a long time, a long, long time. This place where I doubt the goodness of God, because I can't possibly see how this situation, these circumstances can be used for good.

Sometimes when you're in the middle of something it's hard to see past the wall of pain. We've all had those the days when despair swirls and you wonder how is this ever going to work out. Those days when it is hard to even climb out of bed and let your feet hit the floor. Those days when you smile because you have to but it doesn't ever quite reach your eyes because your heart is aching raw.

Watching someone you love deep in the trenches of depression is hard. You want to scream, light a fire under them, you just want to do anything that would make them get up and live. But they are so scared of just getting up and living that they would probably just let the fire lick them away. If all you want to do is to climb under them and drag them to safety, but it is impossible.

Standing by as someone you love runs hard and fast way from everything good into the clutches of things that destroy is gut wrenching. What do you do when there is nothing you can say or do that will help.

What do you do when you fail again and again and again? When you let selfishness, pride and ugliness control you no matter how hard you try and all you want to do is give up and run far and fast away. When you're so tired of straining and carrying the weight of your world that is falling apart, and you're scared to trust God because deep down you don't know if He is going to come through for you.

What do you do when words fail you?

What do you do when you can't do anything at all.

You fall on battered and bruised knees lifting up a broken hallelujah. You sit on the bathroom floor with you back against cold tile and you cling madly to a hope that there is Good coming, ever coming nearer and nearer, glory is all around even when we don't have the eyes or perspective to see it.

You remember you've been here before and He's always been faithful.

Then you get up, throw away your fears of an vast unknown future and run fast and hard into everything you know to be true. Hope is kindled from your broken pieces of pain.

"Hope that the walls will hold, seasons will change, the refuge will prevail, and the sun will rise despite the seemingly endless and suffocating darkness. Good will win despite all the evidence to the contrary.

So let us spin stories and walk forward through the middle of the raging storms, knowing we are always loved and never forgotten.

And when we look back at the most tempestuous times of our lives; may we see the purposeful and organized fingerprints of love in the midst of chaos--a testament that we were remembered on the darkest days and we were never forgotten even in our most vulnerable moments." -Ming (two months ago)