I'm going to be completely honest here - life is hard. Life is hard for everyone. No matter where you are in the world. No matter what possession you have. No matter what the situation... Life is hard.
When I lived in Pittsburgh and worked at one of the highest ranked schools in the state, life was hard. It was hard because there was so much pressure to live up to. The difficulty occurred because I let my life be consumed by trying to be the best. The struggle was there as I pushed and pushed myself to be the best and no matter how hard I tried, I never felt like I succeeded. I also didn't realize how much I was drifting away from my faith because my focus was so much on performance. Instead of taking time to pray at night, I would be going over my schedule for the next day. Instead of prayer in the car on the way to work, I would listen to music to hype me up to get through the day. Life didn't seem hard - it seemed fine, but looking back it was indeed hard.
When I lived in central PA, life was hard. I was separated from the ones I loved the most and the group of people that I felt kept me grounded in my faith. But that struggle lead me to truly begin to prioritize my faith. It was hard. Hard to hold myself accountable for my prayer life. Hard to live a moral life. Hard to be the person that I was created to be. God blessed me with great friends and a phenomenal church, but life was still hard.
Now living here in Honduras, life is a new kind of difficult. My past struggles have helped prepare me, but I have been having this overall feeling of darkness. An indescribable distance from God. It's heartbreaking for me knowing that I have come all the way here to love Him, serve Him, and get to truly know Him. The darkness is hard. The struggle is real. The style of life here isn't hard for me, and for that I am blessed, but the lack of feeling connected to the One that created me is extremely difficult.
Last night, I was truly blessed in prayer. I was reading Romans 5:8
God proved his love for us
in that while we were still sinners
Christ died for us.
How beautiful! God loves us, no matter what our sins, no matter what our struggles, no matter the depth of the darkness - he loves us! I was caught up a bit on this verse, it just kept coming back to my mind even as I continued to read. So I stopped reading and began reflecting on just this verse. I decided after a while that I should google it... not sure why, it's not something I usually do. But one of the first images that came up was a quote that said "I love you at your darkest." Immediately my heart was filled.
We all have darkness. Our darkest moments are the moments of our life that we are ashamed of or that we want no one to see. Well, God always sees us, even at our darkest. It is reassuring to know that His love knows no bounds.
I hope that if you are struggling like I am that these words give you the hope that they gave me.
"I love you at your darkest." Jesus
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