Miserable joy and glorious pain

"I don't know where you're leading, unless you've led me here" is a line from a Rich Mullins song, penned near the end of his life.  I think about that line often.  Every once in awhile I slow down and look back over the years to the afternoon spent lying on my back on this rock, in a clearing in the Rockies at 10,000 feet.  I've just passed the 10 year anniversary of this 4 hours spent alone with God in a place that only God could have created.  To be honest, this past year has gone by so fast that I've not really taken the time to stop and look back again.  But I'm back for a morning in the place where so many posts were originated on this blog that took its name from this moment in time on "my rock".  I'm back and looking once again at this picture that reminds me of this defining chapter in the story that would propel me into the life and ministry that we now find ourselves in.  All that I can say, in an honest reflection, is that I now have 10 years of moments that I could never have imagined, often times didn't desire, and most of the time never felt adequate to take part in.  It has been a paradox of miserable joy combined with glorious pain.  So many good moments, many not so good.  Sometimes seeing clearly and sometimes only living to fight another day.... Deafening silence and unintelligible noise.
If I can add anything of value to anyone's story, allow me to add this;  it is so totally worth it.  We can, if we make ourselves available, enter in to the sort of stories rarely found outside the pages of the Book of books.  We can be answers to others prayers, we can see our own answered through the lives of those we connect with.  We can have a living, breathing, relationship with the one who created us all in his image.  If we wish, we can spend time with him in the garden and, like it or not, we will spend times hiding, questioning, wondering, and quite probably hurting when the darkness comes.  In the quiet times, take the opportunity to climb up on your own "rock" and take it all in, feel his embrace and the whisper of reassurance that it is so totally worth it.

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