Turn to Face Him

This one's from my vault. More self-talk. Verbose and mostly un-edited.

Sometimes things don't turn out the way we thought they would, or the way we hoped they would. And when the reality sets in, or stares you in the face with the immediacy of a punch or a cup of cold water, as is the case more often than not, dissappointment inevitably follows. That is normal. Sometimes, when you offer a hidden, tender part of yourself, a part that has never seen the light of day, and it is not loved, the experience goes beyond the realm of dissappointment and takes you instead into the lonely barren wasteland of all your insecurities and all the things you are afraid of and all of the reasons why you were right when you told yourself never to offer that part of you. Here is where hope is lost, dropped from your hands, stomped into the ground and left to rot because you are doing what you should have done in the first place—walking away. Dissappointment. Despair. These are the dark nights of the soul. They are forces that are the hardest to fight and there is nothing we need to fight more than these. We can start with a simple, straighforward truth, break the ice a little: I am not abandoned. Maybe I feel abandoned by one million people and things, maybe I have been, but there is One who has not abandoned me and He makes it impossible for me to join the Abandoned Club. And once the ice has cracked a little, stack truth upon truth. This one may take some time: I am loved. That is about the last thing you want to tell yourself when you are in the thick of dissappointment and despair. In fact, if you could, you would take the very word 'love' and hurl it with all your strength into oblivion. But love will not be hurled. It will come at you and come at you and come at you until you are so sick of its relentlessness that you throw yourself upon it for relief. And this is not a bad idea, but why not save some time and begin to believe the truth of love now, in the dark night. How, you ask? It is not as difficult as you may think. In fact, the answer lies in four little words. Ready? Turn to face Him. That's all. Turn to face Him. He is good and He is kind and He is where hope comes from. Turn to face Him and He will be there, facing you. You will find that it is impossible to stare equally at the face of Love and the face of DissappointmentandDespair at the same time. Only one face will have you. He will not shove dissappointment and despair aside and demand your attention because He is not the shoving kind. But He will keep your gaze if you give Him a chance. Turn to face Him. All it takes is a moment. And that moment is the difference between a dark night of the soul and a dark night in perfect, unbroken love. And with love like that, the darkness pales in comparison.