i hate nights like tonight.
i’m in my room, listening to christina perri and trying my hardest to drown out every thought in the sounds of piano chords and a cover of death cab’s “i will follow you into the dark.” and it doesn’t work, it never works.
i realized today that i am exhausted… exhausted with trying and failing over and over again to make something of myself. i am just so, so tired.

[i’m all worn down, the time for sleep is now.. it’s nothing to cry about, ‘cause we’ll hold each other soon.]

i don’t know how many times I’ve told God that I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. I get that helpless feeling in my chest, the one that constricts my breathing and makes me feel like the whole world is caving in. It’s like this literal feeling of desperation. and I beg God, over and over again, to change this situation. I am so, so tired of being left behind.

i guess it’s in these moments of despair that God touches me the most. or maybe these are the times where i just feel it the most… because i’m literally crying out to Him, with every fiber of my being. and i will freely admit that i get so tired of it… i get exhausted with pleading and begging. i get so frustrated when religious people tell me that God will answer my prayers if I just have enough faith. because in my heart, i know that God doesn’t enjoy watching me suffer. He doesn’t. but i also know that He’s teaching me.. and i hate that sometimes. i really do. He knows it. i am just honestly freaking tired of learning the same lessons over and over. but it’s like my constant failing and cursing and giving up and starting over, He’s still there. and He’s patient. and it’s not like He’s some passive watcher, looking at me falling on my butt over and over. He’s literally there. and I’m realizing that even if I’m exhausted and I can’t get up and I can’t do this one more day, He can. and that’s the only way this is gonna work… it’s the only way. i’m at the end of my rope. and some days it’s easy and some days it’s harder but it’s on days like this where I especially realize just how much I need Jesus. and how much He knows I need Him… and how much He’s more than willing to be everything that I need and give me more than I could ever ask for. it’s like… I ask Jesus for grace to get through one more day… and instead He overwhelms me with this ridiculous joy. and I don’t know where it’s coming from… but it’s not me.

i guess i’m at this place tonight where.. things are hard. they are. and i know they will be, for awhile. but i have faith… i do. because i’ve been in this spot. where i don’t wanna go through another day. but i always do. one of my favorite authors once wrote, “God must be a pretty big fan of today, because you keep waking up to it.” i believe that.. i believe it with all of my heart. i believe that God wants me to have faith.. to believe that He can make every day absolutely extraordinary.. that He can take a broken person like me and help me up and hold me when I can’t hold myself up. I believe.

i feel so often like i’ve been left behind… and i look in all the wrong places. and then i realize suddenly that God’s been with me through all of this. that He didn’t leave me, because it’s not in His nature. that He won’t… He won’t leave. and that knowledge comforts me more than i could ever explain.

“I don’t wonder anymore what I’ll tell God when I go to heaven when we sit in the chairs under the tree, outside the city……..I’ll tell these things to God, and he’ll laugh, I think and he’ll remind me of the parts I forgot, the parts that were his favorite. We’ll sit and remember my story together, and then he’ll stand and put his arms around me and say, “well done,” and that he liked my story. And my soul won’t be thirsty anymore. Finally he’ll turn and we’ll walk toward the city, a city he will have spoken into existence a city built in a place where once there’d been nothing. “- Donald Miller