Desperation.

Sometimes life wells around you and it just gets overwhelming...or at very least I get overwhelmed. The world is a beautiful place, but ugly things are prevalent too. Babies are buried every day, suicides must be cleaned up, mothers cry, starvation is a horrible reality, cancer is not just a nightmare, tornadoes decimate entire cities, and walls of water wipe out entire coastlines.

I see the ugliness in me. I am impatient, not loving, and selfish. Words slip out of my mouth that cut like swords-and they hurt instead of heal. It's enough to make a girl become overwhelmed.

So I run, I clamber into my car and drive no where in particular. I struggle to believe the words floating from the speakers into the air around me "You do all things well". Sometimes life is enough to make me doubt the things I know deep in my bones to be true...

Just after midnight I find myself at a 24 hour coffee house in Charlotte and I find a soft arm chair...and I sit and pray.

A prayer escapes my lips, a prayer born of desperation and longing. A brutally honest prayer that I doubt in this moment, I doubt that my prayers go anywhere above the roof that sits above my head, I wonder if my whispered words make a difference at all.

Oh God, I believe but help my unbelief.
I have faith but I need you to give me faith.

It is in these moments when I am reminded afresh that I cannot do this on my own.

If I couldn't save myself in the first place-why do I think I could do it now?

I breathe in, I breathe out and then I remember...
I was dead until Jesus breathed upon me.
I cannot save people, that's not my job.
I can only love them.
Because I am loved.
I am loved
I am loved.