Musings of a Two-Year-Old

For much of the past week and a half, I've felt very much like a two-year-old.  As I pray, as I talk things through, as I ponder, the questions that rise from my mind inevitably begin with, "Why?"  For every circumstance, for every perceived difficulty, all I can think to ask is "Why?"

This has caused me to think quite a bit about the difficulties of the past year and a half.  As I think about the creeping return of the mindset and state of heart that accompanied those times, I feel a desperation rising in my heart.  At that point, the question of "Why?" ceases and is replaced with another insistent, decidedly toddler-like cry: "No, no, no!!"  Everything in my heart and mind cries out to protest a return to that painful brokenness and numbness that has, in many ways, marked the last little while of my life.  I don't want to go back to times where my friends say, "You're not yourself"; to times where my professors approach me with worry; to times where I simply can't put my finger on the desperate sadness that pervades my heart.  I want to continue with what my heart has been fearfully but hopefully stepping towards - restoration.

But as I think with admitted fear about the sadness and brokenness that seems to crouch at the door of my heart, I have begun to realize something very important.  In the difficulty of recent times, something has emerged.  As I have come to the "other side" of this difficulty, only to fear being grabbed once more by its clutches, something of deep, weighty truth has begun to rise in my heart.  When I seek the Lord, even in desperation of not wanting to return to where I have been, a realization rises:

True peace has become deeper and more real.  Real rest has become sweeter and easier to come by.  Unshakeable assurance has emerged as more than theoretical - it is now real and experienced.                 

If nothing else, this realization makes the last year and a half of my life "worth it".  Even if I return to that place dreaded by the whole of my heart, I'll make it.  And it will be redeemed - because it has been already.