After returning from India, and through some deep and beautiful conversations, I have been able to think about the impact that time has had on my life. I understand that this can seem like a somewhat selfish perspective to take, but I think it is a worthwhile question that might require more intentional reflection than thinking about the tangible impact that our team had on the lovely people we crossed lives with in India. Connected to this, I was recently asked "what is the biggest question that you have been struggling through, the question you keep returning to"... I am still unpacking a number of heavily loaded questions and concepts and have been learning much through this time, but the question I keep coming back to is "Why can't I cry?" Life is filled with things that remind us of how tragic a fallen world is and the injustices that occur and it is also filled with those things that remind us of the potential of beauty that exists, and just how beautiful life can be. I have been realizing that my life experiences over the past few years have entrenched me in the reality of the current state of this fallen world, and because of that my heart has grown calloused. Not hard-hearted, mind you... but calloused. The same way that your hands must be calloused in order to withstand the vigorous work that can be required of them if you are a musician or a carpenter. Recently though, I have been reminded of the beauty of life, which has altered my perception on the tragedies of life. What I am seeing is that the truth of the severity of the tragedies of this world are most accurately viewed through a lens of beauty. When our eyes adjust to the dark, we are able to see shapes and movement that at first were lost to us. This is important if we are going to be spending lots of time in the dark... but we forget how dark things really are until a flash of light reminds us and our eyes need to adjust once more. There have been some "flashes of light" in my life recently, and while I am still in the early stages of processing all of this... I have been learning much. I hope that tears do fall once more, but I hope that they fall in the midst of beauty.
This is not a selfish introspection at all but a necessary one. It is a gift to be able to stop and recognize the callouses, and that you have a heart to view darkness and brokenness through the lens of beauty. What other hope is there? I believe Christ was probably calloused too, but was always refreshed by the tenderness and newness of the Father's love. It's that refreshment and softness in him that we all need in order to be able to see those flashes of light.
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