The color of the sky was a pale gray saturated with a cold mist of rain. The wind was getting colder and the moisture was starting to freeze. It looked and felt just like my mood. Deceptively bright. Bright enough to fill a room with light but incapable of being the only source of it.  A gray day with mounting fog that felt like an oppressive shroud. There was no escape from the way it made me feel. The dingy light slunk its way in and I allowed it to spew its way out of my mouth. I waited for the sun, an indication of the end to this dismal blockade but that would have to wait until morning. Then again, mornings have beaten me down.

I have grown tired of these days. Every morning my eyes burn, my body groans, and I can barely walk to the end of the hall. When did the middle of life feel like the beginning of the end? Where was my body and how did it get replaced with one hardly recognizable? I feel like I am drowning. I am in a sea of gray, pulled down by the weight of this disease. I am gasping for a fresh breath of life and only find that stale, foggy air. It has become more of the same…… endless days pleading to feel normal……wondering if I will ever feel like I can do all the things that glimmer still left in my heart desires. It is fading and the light is growing more opaque. Yet, I still breathe. I refuse to hand over my life to whatever may be hiding under the shroud. I don’t run. No, I cannot do that any longer. I fly. I close my eyes and free myself. My heart burns and the heat courses down my neck. My pulse and heart are at the same frantic rhythm. I must rise above the gray. Atop what encircles the atmosphere that is my life lives hope. To find it I must push against what is bearing down on me and lift my face to the sky. I must look up. I have to stop watching where my feet are placed and look to where they need to go.

The internal struggle is real. I feel the tug of greed, envy, and idleness slide in beside self-pity. I fight the urge to fold my tired body inward and collapse to the spot on the ground where my eyes have wandered. I don’t have to fight there, I can just rest. I don’t want to get up. Pity says, “Stay.” Hope demands I get up. Faith lifts my head and moves me forward. My faith is one rooted in self-sacrificing love. My feet have not been placed on this Earth to serve my own needs but to give whatever may be left of my tattered body to serve those who need me. But it is hard and I am tired. I am worn down by too many variables out of my control. I keep trying to move forward, hoping, and fixing my eyes upward. I remind myself to pull my eyes away from the haze and to the place where the sun never sets. There is beauty beyond what I can see and more that I will never understand. Here is where my toil has meaning and my unrest has purpose. Faith is trusting in something not fully understood. It asks our feet to move forward even when beaten down with the disparities of life. It gives hope and promises more. Faith is the source of the everlasting light.

I never wanted the obstacles placed at my feet. I move cautiously but I still stumble when I fail to look up to see where I am going. True faith is walking along a path despite the barriers that undeniably make the journey more difficult.  Each day I must choose. I can choose to allow the bitter sting of unfairness to swallow me up in a lightless expanse that troubles my soul and steals my hope or I can choose to walk by faith. I can look heavenward and hasten forward in confidence. I can be assured my path is clear and travels are never taken alone. I can live a life exemplified by faith and grounded in love.

*d*