"All Hopeful and All Broken, All Joyful and All Mourning"

“Sinners come behold your King

Sufferers rise with hope and sing

All is well, mercies are new this day

    Burdens all met with grace”
– Citizens and Saints

     “Two things can be true.” The snarky quote comes to mind as my counselor & I untangle and examine the knot of conflicting emotions on a Monday afternoon. She reminds me that several things can be true simultaneoulsy as I unfold sorrow and gladness wrapped up together. This particular afternoon it comes from complexities resulting after the end of a relationship.  At the start of September K & I broke up. We’ve known each other for four years, dated for most of that, and while this is not our first break up, it is our last one. 

Break ups are pretty much the worst regardless of how wise, needed, or mutual they may be. They hurt. They can make you feel like you’ve been punched in the gut, carry a thousand pounds on your heart, or have that burning sad just behind your eyes. The emotional punch they carry can hit you at the most strange, unexpected moments, just when you thought you were quite fine, thank you. This is because break-ups remind us of the way things ought to be and aren’t. Though inevitable, often necessary, and even good in this life, the breaking and loss of relationship remind us that the world we live in is broken. That we are broken. We are designed for relationship, and relationships were meant for endurance. Break-ups are part of post-Eden life, but they hurt and feel amiss because they speak of something else lost, something not-quite-right.

That is one side of this season. Another is that I’ve seen grace and provision absolutely abound in my life these past weeks. God’s *grace to me (*grace being good gifts that are undeserved.) has been abundantly clear and it makes this time sweet. In the middle of a broken reality I’ve seen evidences of grace that are  not just cosmic, big-picture, theological reality, but personal, direct, daily ways that God loves and cares about me. 

Evidence of grace is in living with a family of my friends and their girls and coming home to an environment where I feel loved, safe, happy and secure.
It is in the provision of time and place for the initial difficult conversation, in speaking truth,
in an providentially planned trip home to see my family,
in my baby brother’s SO thoughtful "break up basket",
in my Mom’s support, 

in coffee with my oldest friend and seeing her kids,
in having an art collaboration to focus on the week after.

It is in teaching Preschool class at church the following few weeks and God reminding me of sweet truths in that space,
in my church family and the word of God,
in seeing the effects, tools & growth from counseling this year put to work,
in the timing of being in a healthier place emotionally, 

in anxiety struggles being immensely better.
There is grace even in the ability to see these things and not be undone, or enfolded in cloud and fog.

There is grace too in the clarity of a decision. 

Besides this, I’m writing and reading more, making plans with friends, walking, going to the lake, catching up with people I haven’t in ages. I get excited about the things I used to; excited about how God is working in my life, in the church, in what He shows me through his word. 

These are good, good things. 

Yet knowing this joy doesn’t eliminate the pain. I feel good things and sometimes feel a gut punch.  I know great love and support and sometimes feel sadness and insecurity. This is where 'two things can be true' comes in. I do feel loved, secure, happy, more myself, and see gifts of grace all over the place. However it is still in the midst of pain, and loss, and anger, and frustration.  These things can be true in me all at the same time. These conflicting things in the same body, at the same moment.

The Psalms are full of this sort of tension. This tension is all over the Bible. In Christian theology we refer to this as the "Already, Not Yet" quality of the kingdom of God. This term encompasses the absolute, unbending truth that Christ is our anchor with the reality of the current tension in our hearts, of emotions tugging, of living in a world marred by sin. The apostle Paul talks about this inner conflict in Romans when he says “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7:15)

We feel something amiss because our souls whisper the reminder of what ought to be, of Eden, of what was before the Fall. We are living in a world, and with hearts, that have been broken by sin. Sin is choosing our own way instead of God’s way. And we think it will bring life, but like Adam and Eve, we are deceived. And earth has been groaning since that deceit, groaning as all its children are born seeking their own way, born in sin. I believe two things can be true at the same time, but I’m not a relativist or pluralist. We don’t create our own truth, we feel this tension because of what is true.

Jesus stands in the same scriptures that acknowledge this tension and says “I am the way and the truth and the life, there is no way to the Father except through me.”  This is not a “both, and” statement. If Jesus is God and Creator of us, then it is a loving, helpful, and kind direction. Through Jesus the broken things are made right. My inability to have relationship with a holy God is made available to me as Jesus takes my sin on Himself at the cross and defeats death at the resurrection.

So, the gorgeous thing is that in God’s good grace, while I live in the Already AND the Not Yet, knowing Jesus means that even those aching and painful feelings can send me right back into His arms saying 'it hurts.' It hurts because it isn’t how it was meant to be, it hurts because God’s original design echoes in my heart. And He who took on flesh knows that hurt experientially. He understands, and He is making all things new. That’s the other side of pain right now. Break ups are awful, but grace has abounded.

In the difficult moments of two things true, God’s good grace loops me right back to my Saviour and anchor. I’m already God’s daughter, redeemed and forgiven because of Jesus’s work; but I am not yet who I should be. I am not yet with Him in heaven. I am not yet fully sanctified. I am already redeemed of my sin and the death it brought. I am not yet free of it’s consequences or sinless in a broken world. In His patience God is MAKING all things new, but He doesn't scratch everything and start over. I’d have pushed the reset button right after Eve and Adam chose themselves. Yet, because of God’s patience, pain and brokenness can send me right back to His arms asking for Him to continue changing my heart and making me ready for Home. Two things can be true at the same time. But the solid and unchanging Author of my faith is ever and always true. In this is my hope and peace. 

“All helpless all secure

All hopeful and all broken

All thankless and all poor

All peaceful and all violent

All fearless all afraid

All angry all rejoicing

All doubting all assured

All joyful and all mourning

Come gaze upon His glory

Come receive His love and mercy

His grace declares His glory

You are loved, forever wholly

Oh Lord our Lord

How majestic is your name in all the earth”

Citizens and Saints,How Majestic,2016