Needing.

Sometimes I ask God for a lot. I ask Him for grace, even though His son already won it over for me. I ask Him for love, even though the red letters are always sitting there in my favorite book as a reminder. I ask Him to help me; to hold me. And when I don't feel like He's there when I need Him, I pretend that He's gone on vacation or that He's playing an amazingly fantastic game of hide and seek.

You see I have these funny ways of assuming. These hilarious little antics about me that make me think that God needs to answer my prayers in my way, and on my own time. And when He doesn't, I think I need more. Needing everything that He's not giving me because I forget that He doesn't always answer our prayers in the ways we expect Him to. I mean I act stubborn about it, but I forget that His grace alone, is really the only answered prayer that we need. But still I go on "needing". Wanting and convincing myself that it's good for my own skin; flesh; security. And the devil convinces me that still, I need something more. Something more than everything that I already have in the cross, alone.

Then I get caught up in these lies, and I get so far away from the unmistakable truth.  I convince myself once more that this seemingly desperate hole looks so inviting. So loving, even.

           "Kelsey. HEY KELSEY! Jump in. This darkness really isn't that scary. You've been 

         here before, Kelsey. It's better this way..."

And it's only in brief moments when I allow myself to forget. And you know, it only takes a moment for the world to fall apart. Literally crumble beneath your feet. Because it is that way. Broken, I mean. Ravishly torn apart by people who are sick, and people who are hungry for all the wrong things. So what's the right thing?

As cliche and stereotypical as it sounds, the rumbling of redempetion really does come from loving more. Accepting love. Naming it. Letting it sink in to only give it back even more than you did before. I mean isn't that what Jesus did? God unmistakably and unbelievably loved His son. And in return for the greatest love, He gave us the greatest hope when He wore those thorns that hurt Him so much. He gave us grace. He gave us everything. And still we "need" more.

Yes, the world is broken. Sometimes it even looks like a literal hell if we close our eyes for long enough. But the second we remember grace is the second one of our branches gets a little but longer. It's the moment that this broken little girl and that beat up little boy carves, "help" into the bark and the rest is up to Dad. We remember that all we ever needed was the cross. And we've already got that! And so these hard times? These mountains that so quickly turn into valleys? We can face them well, now. We can jump right into them knowing that we are full and we are strong because of our Daddy who loves us too much.

"Since God has so generously let us in on what He is doing, we're not about to throw up our hands and walk off the job because we run into occassional hard times." -2 Corinthians 4:1-2.