praise in the storm

(Today's title brought to you by this song.)

Today I am grateful for...

1. The fact that forgiveness is always the right choice.
2. New, cute apartments and roommates.
3. The temple.
4. Good hair.
5. Prayer.
6. The way God comes to find me if I go too far away from Him.
7. Chris's help in teaching me to value what I have to offer.
8. The hope that while I may not understand some things now, I will understand them later.
9. The way that a night of weeping makes you numb enough to function the next day.
10. The Atonement.

"Be not deceived, Wormwood; our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys." This quote is from C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, and I aspire to it. But I'm not there yet.

Or rather, I don't live there yet; I visit it, like a spa, and find brief times of clarity and peace. I want to live there, but I don't think the heart is meant to live in a spiritual spa anyway.

It's all part of grief, I guess. The fierce disappointment and the circuitous questions that march through my brain like a colony of fire ants. The way that pain shows me who I am -- the paradox of the subordinately divine.

I just miss him. The way he made me laugh, the funny faces he made when he was thinking, or confused. The way he'd go on and on about chemical engineering, and then be kind of baffled that I had let him. Mostly though, I miss the way that I felt really treasured in the first weeks we started dating. I don't understand what changed.

But I'm trying to be like my Savior anyway.