As I've previously written, I recently went through a confusingly dry season of waiting & clinging. It's been jet-black darkness at countless times, with equally innumerable false-starts of returning to daylight.
All the while, I've been holding to the hope-inflating notion that when I reach daylight there will be a tangible sense of restoration. I'm not expecting much, just the emotional equivalent of a homecoming parade. And maybe some fireworks, the kind that create shimmering hearts inside of circles and change colors.
But now that I appear to be standing in the sunshine again - grief, health issues, sleep deprivation, and family concerns relatively resolved - I still feel residual numbness. And not that tingly-numbness that your foot does to say, "Okay, okay, I'm waking up!"
Just basic, anticlimactic numbness.
My counseling background keeps tapping me on the shoulder with, "Well, you know, you've been through some trauma recently," and, "Hey, grief takes many forms." All that is true, and I have been giving myself heaping shovelfuls of grace daily.
But shouldn't there be some kind of surge of joy upon reentry into the land of the living? Couldn't there at least be a small float or one marching band?
I waited on the Lord, Isaiah, so where are the eagle wings and superhuman running capabilities you talked about in Chapter 40, verse 31?
Then again...could it be that I am mixing up restoration with resolution? Because, come to think of it, I know a lot of folks who have seen an end to the storms in their lives, but still no rainbow.
If that is the case, how do we summon the rainbow?
Until the answer comes, you can find me sitting in gratitude in this new sunlight. Because, irrespective of the numbness, I am deeply grateful to be out of that darkness. And so I will choose to praise even when I don't feel it.
("Joy" by Page CXVI)
