I have been wanting to write for a while – September of last year to be exact. I had a grand plan to continue blogging regularly, processing life after Africa and my last semester of college and my transition into the “real” world and everything in between. I guess you could say things didn’t go as planned, because those months passed quickly and a lot of life happened. I barely gave myself time to sit down and soak it all in, much less write about it.

So here we are.

I am one month + a few days into my life as a grown up, and things are splendid. My job is great and my friends are great and I am incandescently happy. I think it’s safe to say I’ve got it all figured out.

…just kidding. Not even movie characters get it that good.

My job is hard. On the surface, it has become a daily rhythm (albeit an opposite rhythm, thank you night shift). Sleep – eat – drive – park – clock in. Listen – assess – meds – chart – assess – chart – meds – chart – talk – go home – eat – sleep — and the cycle repeats. It is a good rhythm, a fun rhythm made all the more entertaining by great co-workers and adorable patients. But on a deeper level, it is hard. I talk about children dying in a much more casual manner than it should ever be addressed. I watch parents do everything for their kids whose brains have forever been changed by unexplainable, mysterious injury. I watch babies fight for life as big machines deliver each breath to them through a plastic tube in their throat. I give med after med to dying kids, knowing that for some this is their only chance for survival – the only thing giving them a few more months of hope. It sounds depressing… well, because it is. At work it is easy to see it as just that – work. Another shift, another patient, another sad story. Another kid spending another night in the hospital, worrying about another procedure when all he should need to worry about is what snack to have after school and what animals he wants to see at the zoo. No child should have to worry about when their last day will be. No parent should have to watch their child suffer inexplicable pain. But where I work, that is my new normal.

And then there is the rest of life that is squeezed in between each week of work, long stretches of time filled with sleep + exercise + errands + sleep because “that’s all I have time for”, but really because finding a new community in an old city is hard. I made the conscious decision to let go of a lot of my college community after graduation, telling myself that this would be better in the long run. I thought, “these college friendships are so transient. People stay for 4 years tops and then everyone goes their separate ways. It will be much more beneficial for me to find a new community with friends that are here to stay.” Sounds reasonable, right? What I failed to realize was that this decision hit “reset” on my social life – I am back to square one. In college, friendships come easily because they are all around you – people your age, living in your dorm, experiencing the same rhythm of life as you, looking for the same companionship. After college, this kind of community doesn’t come so easily. It isn’t staring you in the face – you have to go searching for it. You have to put yourself out there, stretch your boundaries, get through the awkward surface-level phase of friendship and commit to really digging deep. All of my favorite things (HA. Jokes.) For me, that means being okay with going to church alone + spending Saturday afternoons exploring waterfalls “with Jesus”, because reminding people that He was there is easier than admitting that yes, I went alone, and no, I did not have anyone else to go with.

“In the midst of the darkness, Jesus is still good.”

Have you heard this phrase before? It pains me to write + meditate on these words because I have rarely allowed myself to really believe them over the last few months. I have let that phrase, that truth float between knowing it and really knowing it. I have heard + read + written it over and over. I have begged the Lord to engrain it into my heart and mind. I have clung to it, gripped it hard until my hands are sore and my knuckles are white because sometimes I feel like it’s all I have left to hold on to in this dry season. When the weeks pass by and I still haven’t found a home church. When I open my Bible every morning and fight against the apathy that sucks the joy + learning out of that time with Him. When I struggle to remember the last time I really felt His presence. When I realize that my once grounded faith is starting to look dangerously like indifference.

It doesn’t feel good to be in this place. I wish I could say that all it takes is the remembrance of this Truth to bring me back to the foot of the Cross, but it’s not always that easy. For me, right now, it is a fight. A daily battle to decide every morning who I am going to live for. Am I going to live this day for myself or for Him? Am I going to let the hours idly slip by, or am I going to use the precious time He has given me for good? Many, many days I do not have the energy to fight. Other days I give it all that I have + still feel like I am getting nowhere. I am still weak + tired + more broken than the day before.

I am ready to turn the page. I am ready for this awareness of my overwhelming sin + my deep despair to turn me back to the Cross. I know that is where He is leading me, in His own perfectly orchestrated way. I am just not there yet. But I know that at the end of this hard season there will be light. True, glorious, beautiful light. He is using my brokenness to reveal to me more of His perfect holiness, His unending love, His all-encompassing grace. I am sure of it.

These words do not stir my soul today, but I am confident that one day soon they will.
Until then, I rest in the thought that despite my shortcomings He never leaves me. Not even in the darkness.