You can outrun pain for only so long before it eventually catches up to you.

When you least expect it, a strange and unpredictable crumbling starts to happen. On the inside.

Everything you counted on seems to be like sand running through your fingers, piling up in a bland heap.

Everything you hoped for is lost, and the more you dig to find even a fragment of what’s gone, the more you wonder if you’re pushing it deeper into the sand and further from your reach.

Discouragement becomes a heavy, dull sweater you wear. At times, it constricts you from laughing.

But you fake it. You pretend you’re not hurting. You pretend you’re okay to your watching circle because everyone is so busy, needing you to be strong, the cheerleader, and the encourager.

Only sometimes you hurt, too.

So, you pray.

“Lord, just one person to listen. Just someone to care.”

You want someone to ask how you’re doing, to stop taking pieces of you without ever returning to replace a single one.

You hate feeling weak, but you need someone to hold you, to let you cry until you can’t cry anymore.

You hurt, and it’s really bad.

You know God is with you. You know because you can hear Him whispering to your soul. You believe He never leaves you.

Still, you cry out to Him because this emptiness is crushing you.

He knows, precious soul. Oh, how He knows.

Your heavenly Father hurts when you do. He longs to hold you Himself, and one day, He will at the threshold of heaven. He will wipe away your tears and remove every speck of sorrow from your heart.

The longing for that promised day echoes throughout your soul, the groaning to leave this world, the loneliness, the pain…

But God reminds you that He strengthened Jesus when He prayed alone on the Mount of Olives. God reminds you of the times He’s helped you in the past and that you have His Comforter living inside of you where things SEEM to be falling apart.

God instructs you to trust Him, so you wait.

When you feel as if you’re breathing your last breath, that you’ve run out of the oxygen that is your hope, God answers your prayer. He sends one beautiful soul to hold you, to listen, and care.

To love you in your darkest day.

Through the tears you share and the “letting go” of the pain, you sense the heaviness of discouragement dissipate. You can breathe again, even laugh a REAL laugh.

There is so much light breaking through the darkness and kissing your entire face that you have to close your eyes. You smile. Deeply. On the inside.

Your darkest day becomes one of the brightest.

And you thank God for the one He sent as the light spreads across your soul, where your heavenly Father begins to piece things together.

“He restores my soul.” (Psalm 23:3a NIV.)

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