The Hard Stuff.
I'm tired.
I'm tired of hoping, waiting, wishing. I'm tired of all the effort it takes to hope for those people, envisioning what ought to be... what is right, what is just. I'm just tired. Hope is hard, it hurts, it feels like there is no purpose right now. How long, how long must we sing this song? How long... I hope and wait for so many things, and today, I feel overcome with the empty weariness that it has brought me. I don't feel any further along the road in the realization of these desires, I feel stagnant, at a standstill. But it's not even of my doing. I do all I can, I pray, I give it over to the One... and then I am at my end. It is God's doing... He has to act. And... frankly, I'm so tired of waiting for you God. I'm tired of praying, I'm tired of asking. I don't even have much to give, but I pray, just this last time, pierce through, please pierce through her heart. Pierce through all the darkness, all the self-sufficiency, all the complacency. I read a letter from 4 years back that referred to these same concerns. I felt as if the words of the letter could have been written yesterday and still been as relevant to the situation now as they were then... Jesus, how is it that we are in the exact same place as we were 4 years ago? Are you not doing anything? Why no change? Have you heard these prayers? What are you waiting for? Are you working, but just under the surface? How long...

I wrote the above a few days ago, and I still feel this, but perhaps some new thoughts will begin to lift my spirit.

DREAMS. WAITING. TIME. recently those themes have come up over and over again and I wonder if there are connections that I can draw between them... wondering why they seem to arise repeatedly in different contexts. This afternoon I went for a long, long, long run and for the first part, my thoughts wrestled with God about the weariness of the hopes of my heart. For the first time in my life, I feel my will wanting to run away from the calling and dream He has given me. Entering into that place of hope and envisioning what ought to be--and the practicalities of what it means to get there--has become too heavy a burden for me - it's freakin' hard! I feel the pain of the place, and I'm 1/2 a world away. All of the factors that will need to be overcome to instill transformation appear to me like an impenetrable labyrinth. This is the darkness. The light is so very bleak. The hope is waning, and shoot, I'm not even there yet! This is my prayer: How long... How long must we sing this song? These are the contemplations of my heart...

But 1/2 way through my run today, I stopped to sit on a log to look out on the water and think. At first I was going to look at my watch to see how much time I could afford and then I redirected myself 'no, I'm going to enjoy this moment, no matter how long, and I'm going to let time just go on by...' that decision opened up my thoughts about time again - my desire to in some respects, live outside of time in my life... to think of time as eternity, endless, and not merely the days and years of my own life here on earth. Somehow that perspective makes the mission before me not as heavy or pressured. And somehow it makes the waiting for emancipated dreams not quite as painful. Four years? What is four years compared to eternity? To see change in that place, it will take longer and longer, but... somehow if I think of time over an expanded span, the frustrations of my heart feel better cared for. Dreams, prayers, hopes all have equal meaning and similar definitions to me right now...

I still ask: How long...?

Then my sweat dried and my skin got cold, and in that moment, the natural thing to do was to start running again. And so I press on...