By Matthew Christian

What do you do when the world goes dark?
When all the lights blink out, every glimmer and spark
And you’re stranded with a turbulent heart
Hopelessly staring at a thousand question marks? 

What do you do when words can no longer articulate 
The chaos, the change, the sinking sands sucking the soul away?
What do you do when your heart is restless,
Ever roving and raging everywhere, 
Lost?

What do you do when the pasted smile on your face
Saying “Everything is perfectly fine”
Is painfully fake; a false facade hiding fear and shame
Afraid that others won’t accept your frailty and vulnerability?

What do you do when no one ever really understands
The magnitude of misery that you face day in and day out?
How despair sinks its teeth into your flesh and bone
Transforming your heart into unfeeling stone
No!

I didn’t ask for this 
I didn’t sign up for pain and trauma
I didn’t sign up to see a whole family broken
I didn’t sign up for innocence being scarred
I didn’t sign up to be abandoned and alone
I didn’t sign up for being made helpless
I didn’t sign up to grieve the loss of life
I didn’t sign up. . . for a lot of things
None of us did
Yet here we are
From the first anniversary to the ninth
From diagnosis to treatment
From virus to vaccine
From problem to solution
From normal to upside down
From thriving to barely surviving

We all grieve loss
We all carry scars
We all wrestle with pain
We are all broken in the end

But what if I told you broken was beautiful?
What if I told you shattered pieces can still become a masterpiece of art?
What if I told you the silence was not the absence of God, but His attentive listening?
What if I told you that the emptiness you feel is a grace from God?
What if I told you that your tears are watering a garden of new life?
What if I told you that hope like the stars shines brighter the darker it gets?

The truth of the gospel is the most beautiful to the broken
Each shattered fragment of a dream is for a reason
Redeemable in the hands of the Master Artist 
The silence
An invitation to our souls to lament to a listening and loving Father
Our emptiness
A reminder that this is not our home and to find our satisfaction in God alone
Each tear
Caught in God’s bottle, declare the truth that today is a gift from God filled with new mercies
And hope
Hope like starlight shines bright in our darkest night 

So what do we do when the world goes dark
And we can’t express the depths of our heart?
What do we do when we feel stuck
With the gravity of life weighing down on us? 

I don’t have all the answers
Neither do you
But the One who formed us in our mother’s womb
Is faithful to complete the good work He has begun
Equipping us with all we need for life and godliness
Forgiving our debts and transforming our hearts
And redeeming our life from the deepest pit
He knows. 
He was always by your side.
He is here now.
He will never leave.
Ever.
And He 
Loves
You.