To the Young Woman in the Impossible Situation

Sometimes the world closes in. There’s darkness and despair. A spark of life only seems like a painful burn in the silence. There is so little light and sometimes that light is more like the tracers you see behind your eyelids on a bright day. There one moment, drifting away the next. And you’re left to choose between two horrible things. You can’t see a way of escape.
You want to choose life – but you don’t feel as if you have any life to choose.
And you might not want to right now. Maybe where you are feels safe, it’s known. In your mind, in your heart, you believe that you are precisely where you deserve to be. It’s your very own fault that you stand in the midst of this sea of discontent and unquiet.
Maybe you made bad decisions in the past. You lashed out when you wanted to draw yourself in. Maybe you chased after joy in the small immediate moments, regardless of the cost, because you didn’t believe that the deeper joy was yours to grasp or run to. Maybe you believe deep down that this is the very best that you could hope for.

And it’s not really that bad, after all.

There are moments when you hear your name whispered and it’s like light filtering through the dust and darkness of the closet of your soul. And then there are the fleeting moments of contentment or pleasure that send signals of life through you. And you remember for just a moment what life could be like or have just a moment where everything goes precisely right.

Until it doesn’t…

And the tempest breaks in.
So you begin to convince yourself that you are responsible for all of it. It is your own burden to carry because of the choices that you made. If you were so capable of managing the good moments, perhaps you can manage the bad. And your perverted, twisted sense of justice that has locked you away for your previous crimes demands that the existence that defines you is precisely the sentence you are entitled to. If only you had worked harder, made wiser choices, done more, said better… then maybe the good moments would karmically outweigh the bad.

And your karma seems so very dark and painful. If this is what you reap, you must have sown some horrific and terrifyingly evil seeds.

Today you looked in the mirror. You saw the choices before you.

Today you looked in the mirror and you wondered who was staring back at you. There were traces just around the eyes of the young lady you once were. The young girl who stood so proudly with Bible in hand on her confirmation day.

Today you looked in the mirror and you forced yourself to smile. The twist of the lips barely resembles the grin of life that came from a younger you…the you from pictures that laughed with her Daddy or found herself full of life, dreams, and hope.

All around you, you feel the nightmare closing in. As you look at yourself, unrecognizable, undesirable, and generally untrustworthy, you feel the nightmare closing in. Darkness, thick like a cloak, wraps around you, drowning the light that tries in vain to leak out of the cracks of your broken heart. Fear, like a cloying fog, makes it difficult to breathe. Frozen in paralysis of the soul, you know that movement in any direction at this point means death.

And then, sadly, you realize that death will come to you. Whether by your own hand or his. It might be simply death to your spirit as you make the final choice. Or it will mean the death of everything that you currently live for. Something, someone, will kill the life inside and surrounding you.

So you choose the lesser death.

You kill the part of you that hopes, that longs, that dreams.

You see it as a sacrifice. It is the lesser, but more honourable death. It gives you more time to fix things. To make right all the things that you have broken or held poorly. One more chance to make everything right again. To make things perfect. After all, it wasn’t like you quenched a living flame. You were just burying the embers of a fire that had been banked. Life as you knew it – in all its darkness and deep mystery and longing – it would go on. You believe that maybe all will become still and silent as you make peace with impossibility and impossible choices.

You might do it again and again. You might make the same decision more than once.

And you never see that freedom is for you. Joy is for you. Life is for you – and it’s meant for so much more than this.

Then the Breath of the Divine will blow.

And that wind will begin to revive the embers and push them floating through the air until they find a place to settle…and burn. And then, those things that you had believed put to an honourable death will find the living power of the resurrection living in them. And they will come back to life – restored, renewed, reconciled.

You will begin to learn that it was never intended for you to be handed that choice.

It is not a burden that you should bear anymore. Not alone.

You do not deserve this shame and guilt and pain that you carry.

You are entitled to precious things – living things.

You *ARE* precious.

You are given permission to be angry. To be hurt. Rage against the world and those choices and circumstances that brought you to impossibility. Feel it course through your veins and renew your spirit and passion. Set yourself on fire with desire for justice.

Life is and will be pain. But choose your pain and don’t forsake it.

Pain is our greatest teacher as it leads us to our greatest Healer.

Choose life for yourself. Choose to allow the light to shine through the cracks of your broken heart.

Even though the darkness closes in, morning is coming.

For everything that you put to death will be brought to living restoration. The sparks and embers that you buried will come to life again. You can tend to them and allow them to bring warmth and life, or they can continue to burn your spirit and singe your soul.

You are not owned by impossibility. You were bought at an impossible price so that you could live into impossibility with promise and life and freedom. That is the greater resurrection. When you conquer death in every sense by refusing to let it have the final word. When you embrace the worth that He has given you.

Fling your emancipation papers at the Reaper, and cry out, “No More!”

When you walk in that valley, remember that the darkness is only Death’s shadow. The shadow is only cast longer as the light approaches to bring it to ruin. The light of life is coming to your rescue. He longs to take your hand and hold you tenderly against the darkness – the one of your own creation, as well as the one of the choices you never should have had to face alone.

And He will hold you.

Even in the impossible.

Because of the tender mercy of the Divine,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.