When things don’t make sense, what is your GO-TO?  What gives you comfort in the chaos?  Where can you go when you need solace in the silence? Do you have a GO-TO?  Is it a person? A Thing?  Something Higher?

I’ve had different GO-TO’s in the past.  Sometimes I’d turn to a friend, my journal, a glass of wine, a cigarette, food…fortunately nowadays it’s an amazing and understanding husband…but the epitome of my comfort in the chaos, is prayer.

Is it just me or can the world be pretty f’d up sometimes?  The brokenness and bad things that happen sometimes overwhelm me to consider.  Just when I forget and lose myself in the bliss of my own day to day world, something bursts my bubble and opens my eyes to this big scary world around me; where bad things seem disgustingly normal.  People cheat, lie, deceive, steal, harm, hurt, fall through…It’s hard to digest; inevitably it doesn’t sit quite right in me and no amount of talking, drinking or eating can settle my upset stomach, and so I pray…

The scales never seem balanced. What’s fair for one person isn’t fair for another.  What true for one person isn’t for another.  One person’s gain is another person’s loss.  But when you truly think about these kinds of experiences, they are just stories, and everyone turns into first person story tellers.  But between two people’s versions of a story is the truth.  The truth can be so elusive sometimes and impossible to actually pin point.  All that’s left are assumptions we make from hearing stories, assumptions mixed with mud to fill in the cracks and gaps of people’s stories and how it all fits together.  Only to find however, that they don’t actually all fit together.  It’s impossible.  Truth finding in story telling can be impossible.  Someone’s story, is just that, their story; their version of events full of their perception, their emotion, their experience and baggage…their version of events might not be Truth, but at the same time, neither is the other person’s version – because they are just that, versions; two parts of the same equation that don’t mathematically add up.  But that’s because what equals are truths not Truth. Their truths not the Truth.

When I get lost in the story telling, I remember to stop putting my faith in the story tellers, but the purpose of the stories.  For that, I turn to prayer.  The answer to prayer isn’t always some magical fix, some miraculous turning of water into wine.  Sometimes it’s something simple like understanding – maybe even hope.

Today I realize, that despite people being so broken and imperfect, love is resilient.  A mother’s love for her child, a daughter’s love for her father, a husband’s love for his wife, love for your extended family, your best friend, your dog, your country, your God…I won’t call it unconditional, but surely, it is strong.  And it’s only under this umbrella of resilient love that  I get the feeling that all things, good or bad, somehow all fit and have a place in this world, even when I don’t quite understand.

It’s only after I start to glue back the last pieces of my bubble back together and crawl back in, do I realize, that not all expressions of love start off by being bullet proof.  Resilient love isn’t me inspired, it’s God inspired.  It’s tested, tried and true.  My love is flitty; it’s subjective, fragile, insecure, fearful and selfish, just like my story telling.  So I thank God for the tests of my faith, the times that my bubble is burst open, because it presents a new opportunity to test my love,  to challenge it to a deeper level and transform my love by His love to Resilient Love.

So in a world of hard knocks and imbalanced scales find a GO-TO that will bring you back to Love.  I found mine, on my knees… <3