I'm not home yet...

Life can be oh so hard, but there are times when the beauty seeps through and you are left breathless, when your heart catches in your throat.

I really think it is those moments that, though one would think they would tie you down tighter to this place, you are released.  You see a glimpse of something beyond what mortal life offers.  I believe that letting go, knowing we don't belong, is what makes people going through incredible heartache able to still love, sing, and dance.

I think of people I know.  I think of a mother who has lost the child of her heart. 

 I think of another young mother who is going through problems she never saw coming. 

 I think of friends who have lost their parent; a husband who bid his wife farewell from this soil as he laid her to sleep underneath it.

I think of the father who waited for a son and now doesn't know how to help the one he has.

I think of the broken heart.  The nights full of suffocating tears.

Yet, to my amazement, these are people who still laugh.  These are people who still have such hope, even when their personal trials are weighing them down.

And it is so beautiful.

Because the smile on the mother's face is from a joy that she could never have found within herself. 

The ability to serve in ministry from the family comes through a strength not their own. 

The father who laughs and holds his son close is a man who has discovered something incredible.

Because they all want something more... they never wanted the loss, the struggles, the heartache...

And they know something so many don't.  It is the most beautiful thing of all.

I have never just written out my beliefs on my blog.  Here they are:

I am a sinner.  I deserve an eternity in Hell.

God is holy and nothing but perfection can allow a person to be with Him in Heaven.  He originally created Man perfect so that there would be no separation, but Man sinned and caused a gap between himself and God.

God is also love and grace.  He loves the world so much that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins.  Because of Christ's death and resurrection, we can be freed from our death penalty and spend eternity with Him in Heaven if we will just believe in Him.

My Lord is amazing.  And He is the same Lord who has given these people, myself, such incredible hope.  He gives us such dreams, such desires.  And He gently reminds us through the hardships that we are not made to stay here.

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."  ~ C. S. Lewis