A Year

It's been a year since I left Suly.

It's hard to comprehend.

It feels like I was there yesterday. I can imagine it all so clearly, the smell of kerosene in winter and the warm settling of dust over everything in summer. The chatter in the bazaar, the kisses on both my cheeks of wrinkled smiling women, several sets of small arms wrapped tightly around my waist hugging love, and so so much more.

It feels like a lifetime ago and sometimes I wonder if it was really real or all just a dream, a really good dream  with a nightmare at the end that caused me to wake with a start.

The wounds are real even though there is no external presentation of them. I have nothing to show to people to explain the hurt, no jagged lines on my skin to represent what's inside. And that's ok.

More and more I've begun to realize that everyone has a story. Most adults carry themes of pain from their past. Just because I can't see the scars doesn't mean that they aren't there.

I'd really like to tell these stories some day. People need to know that life is hard and real for people other than themselves... but in such a way as also speaks the truth of God's presence in suffering.

The health and wealth gospel people would like to say that God will give you a good life if you follow Him. Others look to Scripture and see only the suffering. The thing is, both are true. It's just that a "good" life doesn't look like what we think it does; and suffering doesn't mean that the rejoicing is ended.