Dear Restless Heart

You think you hide it well, but your eyes tell the full story.  The smile you force onto your face does not have the strength to lift the heavy weight of tears held inside--if the tears do not fall, you think, people will still believe that your world is not ripping apart.  You want to believe that God is true, that change is possible, but, after all, your life still lays like fractured pieces of a stained glass window without shape or sense. 

Your eyes lift and fall without ever looking into anyone else's.  You fear looking up and seeing that someone else has found what you could not, or worse, that their eyes tell their own story of a losing battle without hope. 

Wrestling hope and despair leaves you so weary that you can barely lift the beer in your hand, the phone to your ear, our the palm full of pills to your mouth to numb the gnawing fear inside of you.  On a good day you feel nothing, on a better day you fill the void with rage.  The slightest thing makes you angry because if it doesn't you know you will weep until you drown in the emptiness of your soul. 

You think no one sees you.  I see you.  I want to shake you out of numbness and smooth the hardened lines around your weary eyes.  I cannot, but I know Someone who can.  But you have to stop fighting the breaking into pieces because the One I know is an Artist and His best work is done while bringing life out of the dust.  Let the pieces fall.  He will not fail to pick every one up and make something beautiful with it.   

What do you really have to lose?  The anger?  The fear?  The restlessness?  My deepest prayer is that you will know the Prince of Peace and that, "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds." (Philippians 4:7)