The Setting-Sun Journey.

 
This photo has a story. I feel it.
 I don't know if it has anything to do with this quick-snapped sepia picture, the dear friend who gazes far, or even the standing-solid concrete bridge...I think that the story has everything to do with the way my mind is turning and how my heart yearns for something more.

The setting-sun sky,perhaps.

Sitting here before a blank screen leaves me grasping at how to tell this story. Picking up the colored leaves spinning through my conciousness and pasting them back onto the tree. I need a complete picture. The sky is grey today and rain drips steady beyond my window. And I sit here and sip my chai and ponder at how to begin.

There was a book I read as a little girl. Over and over I read it. Again and again about a man who could fix almost everything. But he did not think he could fix a broken heart. As the last page turned, we found him capable of just this feat. He repaired the heart of a little girl who brought him her dog-chewed dolly. And he made this dolly new again with his love and careful attention. Fixing broken hearts.

A few days ago, I pulled that book from its dusty spot, warm on a low shelf and I discovered something.
 I have always been a fixer. Wanting to fix all that is broken in this tattered world.

 When I was in the middle of my fourth year, I met the One who is able to mend the frayed edges and straighten all that has bent crooked. I asked him to take up residence in my not-yet known to be broken heart. He did. And while He has not keep it from breaking at the fragile spots, He knows just how to hold me close when it shatters. Making me stronger at the broken places.

When what I long for is not what I see.

When I witness those sucumbing to illness and disease and I hear of people killing, for what?
Of women devalued and babies crying alone. And the American poverty of lonliness. And despair, it overtakes me. And I want to go now, I want to run harder and faster and I want to fix....fix...fix it all.

When I am tired of trying and striving, He reminds me that my life is that little bit of morning fog, the stuff that burns away when the sun touches it. I am not here for long. And so I let it go. All of it.

I want my time here to be fully about His perfect broken-heart fixing power. And not mine (cause I do not have anything without Him).  Because I only have what He has given me. A longing to see it all made right. A yearning for His Kingdom.

He is the only one qualified to mend my heart. Because He lived this life on earth as a man who felt the heat of the sun and the pain of losing a dear friend. He walked through the crowds of the sick and the dying and He showed us how to stop for the one in our path. And He cried out in the garden and asked if it were possible to let our anguish and suffering pass by Him. But he accepted it and He lived it. And,He died. He experienced temptation far beyond what I can even imagine and He did not cave beneath the weight. He let the little children come to Him. And He loved. Oh, He loved.

 And I have learned that living broken is not a bad thing. It is necessary to know His heart of love for us, his children. I can live in broken-hearted joy out of  the fullness of His power, because I see the light on shattered edges dancing throughout the room. I know that it will all be made whole one day.

Beautifully, perfectly,

Whole.

And so, I am not convinced  that the story is about the bridge, or the friend, or the sunset. Maybe in some small way, it is. Maybe that story inspired mine.
A story of our journeying in this dim-lit world.
His strength and power. And our willingness to follow where He leads during our brief walk on earth.

The end.