We all want reasons. We want formulas to predict whether our hard work will pay off, whether our love and support will always make our partners happy and our kids love us. We want to live in a world in which not one ounce of our hard work or our pain or our deepest hopes will be for nothing. We want to live in a world in which nothing is lost.
It was one of the most surreal things I have experienced. In a time in which I should have felt abandoned by God, I was not reduced to ashes. I felt like I was floating, floating on the love and prayers of all those who hummed around me like worker bees, bringing me notes and socks and flowers and quilts embroidered with words of encouragement.
But when they sat beside me, my hand in their hands, my own suffering began to feel like it had revealed to me the suffering of others. I was entering a world of people just like me, people stumbling around in the ==debris of dreams== they thought they were entitled to and plans they didn’t realize they had made.
“When the feelings recede like the tides, they will leave an imprint.”
And they do. And it is not proof of anything, and it is nothing to boast about. It was just a gift.
But I am learning to live and to love ==without counting the cost, without reasons and assurances that nothing will be lost.== Life will break your heart, and life may take everything you have and everything you hope for.
But there is one kind of prosperity gospel that I believe in. I believe that ==in the darkness, even there, there will be beauty, and there will be love. ==And every now and then, it will feel like more than enough.