Quote:

"How do you do it?" Cora asked. "You have plenty of bad memories. And I know you have nightmares. How do you numb yourself to them? How do you turn off those memories?"

"Turn them off?" Will ran a hand through his hair and laughed. "I can't turn them off. They're there. Always. I… wrestle with them, maybe, but I've had to accept that they are mine, and they're with me. They're a part of my story, and somehow that gives me a kind of peace." 

~Jamin Still, Tales of Hibaria: the Master of Tides

Context:

Despite our best efforts, we live in a broken world, and trials and catastrophe will always find us. No one is above the stain of grief and pain and loss—Cora sure isn’t! 

Cora was an innocent child when the Storm swept in and took her family from her—leaving many children orphans, and changing the fate of Hibaria. After such a devastating loss, Cora experiences nightmares and a constant fear of the sea, so when she is offered the chance to numb her grief in the shape of a circus token, she readily accepts it and refuses to take it off—despite the fact that it may be hurting her more than helping.

She and the rest of the orphaned children in the circus remind me a lot of us, and how we would much rather numb or forget our pain or emotions rather than let ourselves feel them and process our problems. It seems such a harmless thing to instead scroll social media, or binge Netflix shows, or maybe keep our lives so busy that it drowns out our thoughts. There are many ways for us to bottle up our pain and grief, but it hurts us in the long run, and was never how God intended us to deal with sadness.

Sadness is not a sin. It is natural and human, and a healthy response to pain, grief, and loss—but staying in your sorrow and never moving forward when the time comes, is not.

We are not made to attempt to push past it and refuse to process. Instead, we need to embrace it and not try to tamp it down. And we need others to sit with us in our dark places who will remind us of the dawn we cannot see.

We are made to come through to the other side, and though we may be completely torn and scared and our hearts ripped to pieces, we can be renewed. We will be sewn together again no matter how impossible that seems, because there is One who knew us before we took our first breath. He knit us together then, and He will pull us together again now—though we will never be exactly the same.

Our sorrows are sewn into our stories just as our joys are, and they are made into something beautiful because of the Hands that shape them. Our hearts will be shattered again and again by life, but every time God picks up our broken pieces, He re-forms us—never the same way we were before, yet still good. He creates a beautiful stained-glass window out of our shattered pieces, and refuses to leave us as broken masterpieces scattered in a million shards on the ground.

We are called to carry each other's burdens, and to not let those whom Jesus loves sit in the darkness alone. We are called to sit with them, and reflect Jesus’ light. We cannot fix them, and we should not try to—which can be really hard sometimes because we don’t want to see those we care about in pain. But if we attempt to, we would make a pretty lousy mess of things, so thank God He has everything under control!

Sometimes all you can do is be with them at the end of all things, and trust the steady and ever faithful Hands of the Weaver, the Potter, the Comforter, and the Healer. Waiting with them for all things sad to be made untrue.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John‬ ‭16‬:‭33‬ ‭

Written by: Inara Sautter

Art: "All Things New by Jamin Still"