in the midst of the grey

I was struck by a comment in my support group last night.

"Everything is not black or white. It is all so grey...and even the grey has so many shades."

I will speak for myself, and yet I am confident I speak for many, that when it comes to our cross -whatever that may be - we so badly want to understand. We lose sleep over this need to make sense of all the things that make no sense at all. And here we have this Savior, this Man who was just raised from the dead, and He is telling us over and over and over again...be not afraid...my plan is for good...and by the way, you will NEVER understand.....

Our command is not to understand and follow.

It is to pick up our cross and follow.

Understanding our cross is not in the followers manual.

Easy to do when life is going as planned.

Hard as heck to do in the midst of the battle.

But we don't have to beat ourselves up for this sometimes wavering faith; for this demand for a sign. The crowd in today's Gospel, standing in the presence of Jesus, ask, "What can you do?"

We are just so darn human.

We want to see and know.

We want to hold truth with two hands and completely understand.

It is in these moments that I fly to Mary, the Lord's perfect example of saying YES to God without being given the details.

It is on these days I apply Scripture to my mind like I would a lotion to heal a burn.

Because His promises do just that - they soothe what hurts - He is our Healer, after all, and His Word has restoring power.

Psalm 90 has a verse that has been on a loop in my mind:

Give us the joy to balance to our affliction for the years when we knew misfortune.

He does this, you know.

We can know misfortune without understanding it.

But we can also have joy to balance out the days we are certain we can no longer stand.

And I will often wonder how on earth we can praise a God who fails to respond to our prayers in the timeframe we have given Him...how on earth we can stand hand in hand in a circle and thank this God who all too often we do not see at work, who far too often we demand, "What can you do?" And yet, it is precisely in these moments that I am most confident in His power and grace because no matter how low we fall, no matter how hard we land....we still land. Hand in hand.

And no matter the cross, and no matter the cost, there is this swelling of hope, this balance of joy, in between the black and the white, in the midst of all of that grey.