On understanding...

I don't understand.

Something I've been saying in my mind a lot lately. It's difficult to get around.

Life goes on, but it doesn't erase. It keeps moving but it doesn't have the capacity to make it go away.

You go through the moments and you do what you can. You laugh sometimes and you cry just as often. You still shower, make dinner, clean the house. You have beautiful moments where you see the love of God come shining through and redeem the brokenness around you.

But the moments of heartache, you can't avoid. Something happens. Some trigger. And your mind starts replaying what has been. And then come the questions. And you have no answers. Or inadequate ones at best. So then comes the inevitable: I don't understand.

Exasperation. And frustration. And more than anything, brokenness. And then it comes: I don't understand. God, I don't understand.

And I still don't. I've found some good. I know Him, the One I have believed in. I trust Him. And He's teaching me to trust Him more and more.

And I find truth every day as I watch my amazing loved ones walk through this.

Yet I don't understand. And it bothers me. I want to tie it with a bow, lend it meaning and be free to move on with full assurance of purpose. But it doesn't come. It's clouded with ambiguity and for every certainty, a thousand uncertanties come crowding in.

I don't understand.

And it bothers me.

Yet when I consider some of the other things that baffle me, I'm reminded how limited my own understanding is. I cannot conceive of a reality unbounded by time. My mind lurches at the proposition of numbering the sand on the shore or the stars in the sky. And to my finite understanding, the premise of a million galaxies stretching out into infinite space is beyond all comprehension.

This is certainly not the only case in which I simply do not understand. There is far more to this life that I don't know than what I do know.

And to the many things of this life that I do not understand. For once, it is comforting to add another.

"And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." - Philippians 4:7

There are an endless number of beauties and horrors that defy my capacity for comprehension.

But one stands out most exceedingly incomprehensible of all.

Him.

Who He is.

How He brings peace even in the midst of turmoil.

Once more: I don't understand.

I still don't.

And for now, that's ok. It has to be.