God’s Glory in the Stormwinds

by Liz Reehle

I write this from the battlefield. The stormwinds are circling and everything in me screams to hunker into a ball and hide.

But I know I can’t. I believe in what I say. Death and hopelessness haunts the coalescence of my being, but there is light beyond the shadow and beauty grows from these black, suffocating roots.

Even as the tracks of my tears feel cool on my face, and the breath whistles through my nose for snot’s obstruction, I write.

Because I know that I am not alone, and I refuse to let you believe in loneliness.

I can’t see the end of this. My heart screams out to the Lord asking when it will be over, and all I get in response is a “not yet.” But oh, I know there is love in those words. My heart is burning with a cold fire that questions the worth of every beautiful thing I see. I must watch beauty die as it falls into that fervent, empty fire.

But even as these frail, earthly components betray me, I know in the whole of my being that the Lord is good and just and loving, and that even this shall pass… And He knows, that I don’t have the strength of will right now to hope for that passing… yet He holds me. Yet His love burns just as brightly. And were that love not already burning at the perfect, most ardent way that it possibly can, it would burn all the brighter. For the hallelujahs of the darkest depths carry the most sweetness to His ears.

I am on the verge of giving up… giving up on endurance, on beauty, on the good fight… It is my strongest inclination to succumb to the disbelief in all healing, strength, and Divine Providence.

I know this.

The Lord knows this.

And he requires nothing more of me.

He requires nothing but that I tell Him. That I give him my heart and hold nothing back.

And that I tell you. That, by some miracle, He may make you understand what I begin to comprehend: this hell that we traverse is not ours to overcome; the hope that yet alludes us is not to our shame.

The stormwinds circle. My heart says to hide; my mind says to fight; my body says to collapse; my will says to die. But my soul… my soul tells me to sit in silence… to wait in Divine anticipation of aide. Not that I should feel guilt for my lack of hope, or shame for yet another weight of weakness that feels as though it should finally break my back. No… there are so many right answers… none of which my heart will have.

But it will wait.

In acceptance of the frailty.

Without contention.

Without intention.

Not to fall to apathy, but to acknowledge the presence of it, yet know that He restores, He redeems, and all that ails and crumbles does so under His Perfect Power.

And even this will be made right.

Even this He makes beautiful.

Even this.

Even this.

Oh, to His Glory.

Even this.