Look up.

This past week felt really long. I don't do this very often, but this is my journal entry from Friday. Maybe it's for you too.

2.4.11

Look up.

It stirred, a strong thought coming out of nowhere.

I overslept after 5 hours of sleep. I had stayed up too late trying to start a canvas and finish a paper. I had promised myself I'd start to paint again, but my colors just didn't work. I tossed it on my desk, and just went to bed, feeling incredibly useless. I woke up to the botched canvas, a reminder of my failure. Then, I spilled coffee everywhere. Dropped my phone in the snow. One thing after the next after the next. My heart felt brittle and all of the letters that threatened to come tumbling out from behind my throat were biting and sarcastic. The bitter cold had crept through my skin and stolen my usual warmth.

If I'm being honest, my walk with God has been feeling like more of an uphill climb lately. It's not that I'm not going anywhere, it's just that each step is incredibly hard. When I had quiet time this morning, it didn't feel renewing like it usually does. It didn't feel like the smell of earth after a good rain. It felt frustrating- and I walked away feeling more angry than I did when I started.

As I drove to work bleary-eyed and exhausted, everything in me felt like it had been stretched too far.

Look, Elizabeth.

As I turned onto campus, I caught a glimpse of the sky. Yellow melted into dusty pink that faded into brilliant orange, a haze around the rising sun. It was my sunrise. The sunrise that I had tried to paint the night before. My breath caught in my chest, tangled around my ribs.

How had I almost missed this?

The sun rose bravely, like it knew it was scaring away darkness with the thought of dawn. Suddenly, I could breathe. I squinted into the light and was flooded with the feeling that I was known. It streamed down, washing traces of frustration and sadness from my bones.

I hear you, Elizabeth.

It was quiet, like someone was humming a song in the distance. But it was there.

Me, heard?

My voice, my dreams, my frustrations, my biggest fears, my tip-toe hoping and wild expectations for an adventure that seems so far away.

My stubborn eyes brimmed.  My sunrise did exist, better and brighter than I had imagined it in the first place. God's timing never quite seems to be my timing. His ways never include anything that I can wrap my mind around. Yet these dreams I have- they're not so far off. They're in His timing and in His ways that are a million times more beautiful than anything my mind can imagine.

My life is His canvas- and as surely as the sun rises with the morning- He will finish what He started.