This past week I have been left with a flux of every emotion known.  A small precious infant life has been lost, silenced and taken too soon.  Questions flood and my bones have inquiries as the darkness quakes in its aftermath.  Why should a young mother bury her 4-week old precious baby girl that just came from her womb?  What kind of a Jesus would pardon such? How can the shadows find light when the ache supersedes the name we cry out to?

Finding her way through the thoughts of a burial of her husband stricken with a death filled cancer, how does she forth come and praise God in the forever darkness she has lost her words in.  As he loses his speech to illness, she cries out, “where are you in the darkness, God?” How do you speak when all of our words are of question that no one can answer.

A family member feels left behind, unloved and alone.  The darkness threatens to take her light and leave her succumbed to the fear of it all.  What if I’m not enough? How does she handle rejection at the hands of what should blanket her with its warmth and ultimate life forward?  She should be moving like a tumbleweed towards the sun, not feeling faced in an ever-turning journey backward.

The still that the sea claims screams out an answer that we didn’t expect.  For God has spoken and He tells us that even in the darkness of it all peace awaits our lungs that beg for His air.  It doesn’t make sense when we cry out, and when He is silent we scream, “your silence makes me fear.” Jesus, oh Jesus.  Help us see You in it all.

When darkness spreads through our blood how do we find reassurance, how do we silence the fear?  When we feel rejected and lost and we smell death at every avenue we take, how do we overcome? The light is dark, the loss is all we can breathe in and the sunshine is caught somewhere in the midst of it all, unable to shine her breath on the land.  The wake is asleep and the Jesus in it all feels confused and silenced. How do we find the voice we beacon as Your song in us?

Through the fear and longing is where we can find our greatest inner ability to fight the battle we have been left to wage on this earth.  It has never been easy and cannot be slighted with our diminishing faith. Yet, the struggle of it all is where the shadows come to light and His name is bellowed from the chasm of our own personal hell into the plethora of His Kingdom He has saved for us.

My hands hold the soft beauty of an aftermath of a storm that has produced a seed of life, free from rage and a wakeless darkness that trembles inside us.  I cannot answer why a baby would die, why a husband could be called home way too soon, or why someone who has given their whole heart to the world is rejected.  All I know is that in the midst of it all He has us, and He is enough.

His name is life and the black that this world can blanket us is overthrown by a rainbow that bleeds its colors over the silenced prayers that we feel fall unheard.

Jesus, we cry.  Jesus, we bellow.  Jesus we need. And in that, the darkness comes to light with sparkles, unimaginable fragments of what we are meant to be.  Even if it encompasses sorrow, especially in the midst of a disparage that brings us to our bloody knees, He makes it known that as we tremble He is our rock.  As we shake, He holds our peace, as we quake, He isn’t shaken.

The rage can be unforgettable as we question the why’s of our life, yet His peace can form our foundation until we can figure it all out and see our life in our peripheral vision that may not come until years later.  His tremble is within us, His shake brings us to the core of who we are. His love is always there as His name shouts, “It is Well. I have overcome. Have faith and jump with me as I get you to the other side.”

Until then your silent prayer isn’t unheard and in it all, His brilliance has to be found within us as we wait.  Be content in the time that we have to be patient until the tremble of God cracks and is only left at the wayside of all that is broken and barren within us.