Life can be good again.
It can take fifteen years and eleven months with a week, but I promise;
Life can be good again.
The nights full of terror and confusion, hurt and despair can seem endless; that feeling that wakes you up nauseous and disoriented with only your fears and the loneliness to play as your friends can even seep into the daytime, making everything ache while you just try to breathe again.
But I promise sixteen years from now, maybe less, you could be driving up the mountains back home watching every green hillside as you pass and the very big summer clouds from your hometown, calling for rain, while you listen to your family laughing in the back of the car. Even your forever silent sister.
I know you cannot see further than the words from this song you love so much, the one that explicitly sings about your pain as if you’d written it yourself and exposed your soul’s very deepest aches,
but if you believe me, there’s a hand that can hold yours all through the night; making everything else around seem like a waste.
It’s an invisible one most of the times but I promise you He’s there. And He can make everyone come alive again, and give enough hope to fill our days even with laughter and forgetfulness then.
Instill such a breath within us that we’ll find out there was no oxygen before, none until at His feet we fell.
And looking back, you’ll also see He was there all along;
Maybe in the nights He took your hand without you noticing because you couldn’t see beyond the pain,
Maybe He cried too, the day the ones that wanted to leave finally did,
Maybe every unbearable second you endured, He was there, following you up the stairs into your hiding spot and sitting there, quiet, until you turned towards His face; the only reason you were able to catch your breath.
Maybe He got angry to see your spirit cry in weakness time and again, maybe it hurt Him too when you said “It’s very little what I do have, and even that gets taken away every time!”
Maybe that’s why He extended His hands to see if you’d reach out the rest of the way, to see if a happy life could come from all this, one with your hand in his hand. Your heart craving his heart.
He likes you being able to forget everyone else. And for every face that turned to dust, you’ve been able to see His beautiful one more clearly. You get angry when you remember because as you got older you began to understand many things that would’ve never have come to mind before, but now you’re able to let go quicker… and He’s always there, knocking on the door, waiting for you to open up and jump into his arms for the day.
You’ve gotten to know the tenderness of having little kids near and it’s changed your heart, for once, and you still can’t fathom how having been one yourself you never got to see the adult members in your family show any sweetness towards yourself and your siblings when it’s truly so easy… but slowly, He’s rained down love for the lot of you as if that was everything He wanted to see you surrounded with since the beginning, and so He did what only He could. That’s all He’s done from the start.
Listen. I know they left. I know whenever you see other families where they’re still there, you still grieve whenever they get to hug him and you never got to ever again… I know you lost any sense of sweetness in your trying to survive, but He will make you sweet again, and you won’t even notice how or when, but one day you’ll find yourself caressing one of your sister’s backs when troubled and also wanting to stop fighting the other. You’ll find yourself wanting to see them also find life. Life.
Pain makes you sick, you know? And it’s alright, you cannot turn it off… but He can heal.
Those you cannot forget, you’ll start to see in a different light; everything they did to you are things He would never have done, and you neither… messy, angry, and hurt as you were. He taught you not to be like them and you fought… but now you cannot admire any of them anymore, in fact, you remember many with disgust. A lot of what comes to mind after years of losing yourself in your mind trying to cope hurts at first, but that’s good, it reminds you to forgive. And you do, you know you did when you start forgetting, which you also do, weeks can go by now with none of them existing inside your mind’s space or heart.
Life can be good again, I promise. Don’t give up, better look, up.
When He healed you it was sweet. His presence has a sweet tang to it, literally speaking, and now you’re starting to sleep all through the night, no fear. Even when it wants to make itself at home He beats it because you close your eyes and none of what you remember fresh as yesterday happens.
You don’t move anywhere without looking at Him first and that has brought a sense of steadiness you never knew existed into your being. That’s good, you know?
You’re even starting to learn how to love the still waters, ruthless and silent as you saw them in that movie that greatly showed how they feel… because now you’ve started wondering, if they were bad, why would they be written as two of the pleasant places where He keeps his loved ones? So you’re even trying to learn.
He’s teaching you how to live and you want to listen.
Mom lived. How about that? And you didn’t lose your sisters. You did turn to dust, some parts of you are still floating around very destroyed, but somehow you feel more alive than in the past you ever thought was possible.
There’s more people now, and whenever you see their faces, so similar to yours because of your sister… you see her and wonder how that was even possible, to fill such a wrecked place with this unexplainable life.
Everything broke that summer but you knew it was coming…
now life is good again.
When that other summer came, you knew yourself forever undone and not in a good way,
but life is good again.
It’s not easy, now you find yourself without the time or mind to do things, you’re trying to change and grow and understand… but mom put on words what you’ve been experiencing, you’ve been enjoying your family as it is now, not wanting to leave them not even to keep on writing your books that have seemed to have been put on hold for a while now. Even your other projects. But as she put it, you saw it, maybe this is not the time for that but for this, love, laughter, cooking, watching movies, and hoping again. Maybe this is what He wants, and will take care of everything else and move you along in his timing.
You can move again. You can also breathe.
Life is good again in a way you sometimes wonder if it ever was, back then.
Can you hold on to hope?
Keep on calling, for He will come.
Life can be good again.
-SFTS
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