There are days when...

I struggle with sadness, discouragement, even despair. It is lifelong.This winter here in Minnesota has been a long one. I have had my closest girlfriend move out of the country and I am struggling to "understand" a new season in our family's life -- new struggles for our oldest child and confusion about how to mother in this new stage...There are many other heavy "normal" things despite the richness of the blessing and the comparative ease of my life to so many others living right next to me or across the world. It is my spirit that is weak. Christ, our Anchor. Christ, our Constant-Unchanging "Fixed Point of Reference". Christ, our Joy. Christ, our Hope. I know. But in the "knowing" my heart is burning with the lack of air while I sink to long at the surface. Today my friend and neighbor Sarah Deems played me a song that she and her husband Jacob recorded on a recent date-night. Their three girls were in bed. Sarah layed down the rest of her housework. Jacob took a break from grad-school studying (which he jams into the crevices of a life full of full-time teaching and fathering and husband-ing). So at 11:30 a night they played this song that Jacob co-wrote with a friend of theirs. It is beautiful. It is sad. It is like streets lights on untimely snow-blanketed city streets. It is like my heart right now.

https://soundcloud.com/jacob-deems/rest-of-us