Some days are darker than others. Today the sky skuds up with clouds and while I’m thankful for the rain, I wrestle with angst.

Because on my insides, in here in my heart, I resonate with the sky–an endless stretch of gray and a little foreboding, too. Headlines can do that to you. I’ve read plenty of heart-break this week and honestly, I don’t know how to live between the lines. Those lines that hem us in on all sides here–all the joy on the one hand, running right alongside all the pain.

So, I sweep up yesterday’s grime off the kitchen floor and I cry a little. And then I glance over at my kids with their eyes brimming, an eager exhilaration, and I listen as they tell me what they want to learn this school year. Gideon, he wants to find out how trains work, and jet planes and race cars, too. And my Hope-girl, she’s curious about frogs and she wants to color, lots, so I find that in between my tears, I’m smiling, too.

And just the other day, I had wondered how a soul could be so encompassed by all this love, and still be, at times, inconsolably lonely. Because when I stand back, and consider my life, I’ve got everything a girl could ever want. A husband who lovingly shares all he’s got with me. A beautiful and comfortable place to call home and the sweetest kids to keep me company. And I’ve been crazy blessed with a whole heaping amount of the dearest friends. The ones that you can go on walks with and spill your guts out to. Or ponder life with. And pray with. And sing out at the top of your lungs in your most out of tune voice with.

And yet, in spite of all this, and even though I’ve got a relationship with God, there are these moments when I feel it–that blasted ache that seems absolutely nothing can fill.  I know I’m not alone. C.S. Lewis must have felt this too, the day he wrote,

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

So, I wonder. Could this be it? Could those moments of loneliness and longing just be a part of living here, in this rubbled broken world? The Narrative of God does describe it this way. That ancient Book, the one that the writers claim that the Maker Himself breathed those words into them and they testified. It tells about how the world became broken and things now are not as they should be.

But, there is more to the Story. And so the God believers and the Jesus-followers, we ache, yes, but we still carry around hope deep inside our throbbing chests. Because we’ve read the account, and we firmly believe that there is a Forever right after this. We know where we’re headed–to the land of the living, the fully alive! A place where the goodness of our King will fill in all the emptiness and ache. And where all the loneliness and dark that threatened to undo us here, will just be old forgotten tales.

The sky outside my window has changed its hue.  Sometime, while I was in here typing out these words, those clouds shifted and a ray of light burst through.

I steady myself and learn to live between the lines of joy and pain. And hope can’t stop thumping earnest inside my chest. Some things just won’t make sense unless there is more than the here and now. I do believe Him. The One who tells me parables about another Kingdom.

A place I was made for.

A Home to belong to.

Just over the horizon, that endless Day that bleeds through.

“I believe that I shall gaze upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” (from Psalm 27:13)

“The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.” (Proverbs 4:18)