I Know It Is Hard to Live

it is so much easier to pretend you don't exist

I know it is hard to live. You have lost things you thought you’d never be able to live without. The person that looks out of your mirror has questions you cannot answer and longings you cannot satisfy. I know that when you stand before the window of your past, regret is always somewhere in the landscape, walking towards you, extending a hand of feigned comfort. I know that in the middle of the night, lying awake in your bed in the dark hours, fear wants to swallow you whole.

You feel helpless. You feel hopeless. You feel like the weight of the world will crush you. You want to lock yourself behind a closed door. To protect yourself from the world that is breaking into pieces around you. You feel that ultimately, life is a losing battle. You are clutching tightly to the fragments of your shattered world, pulling them in close, holding on for dear life.

How can I say this so you will understand?

You feel that you have nothing left to give. That you walk into a room of people who are laughing and smiling and at ease making small talk, and you are paralyzed. It is so much easier to pretend you do not exist.

But this is what I want to tell you: you do exist. And standing here, right now, as fragile as cracked glass, though you feel you are far too broken to ever regain your usefulness, I want to tell you there is something left for you to do.

Though you have lost nearly everything, though you are even now in the slow process of grief and loss—look up! Let me take your face in my hands. Listen to my voice. Look in my eyes.

You feel poor, but you have riches greater than kings of old. You possess treasures of which the wisest, the wealthiest, the most influential men and women of generations past can not lay hold.

Beating heart, breath in lungs, eyes that see, ears that hear, hands that can reach out and touch, words that do not lie dormant in a sleeping heart but are activated by the miraculous instrument of the human voice. You are alive.

If you don’t know how to live, start with the eyes: see. Look around you for the beauty that remains. There are the black lines of trees in the distance, the rising moon in the sky. The dawn is coming, and with it, color. Let the morning move through your senses. Listen. The birds are singing. A million humming things are waking to life. Breathe in the fragrance of sunrise, the dewy newness of a singular and unrepeatable day. Taste. Make yourself a cup of coffee. Drink it in as if you have never tasted it before. Reach out and touch something, someone. Feel. Let the day come through the tips of your fingers and enter into your body.

You are alive. Out of all of the people in history who have come and gone, loved and lost, your heart is still beating. And it is no mistake that you are alive here, now, for this moment in time. There are people that only you can reach. There are words only you can say. There are thoughts only you will think. Conversations only you can carry. You were made by God. He has seen every moment of your life. He goes before and behind you. He will never leave or forsake you. When all seems lost, he is the treasure that can never be wrenched from your hand. As long as there is life, there is hope.

Please, do not go back into that dark room. Do not lock and bolt yourself inside. Open the doors. Fling wide the windows. Let the light flood every corner, cast out the shadows of fear and regret, and wake and make the simple, profound choice:

Today, I will live.

Dear friends,

Sending hope for a new day, a new year, a new life. If this post resonates with you, I invite you to listen to Randy’s song, Where Could I Go, which I promise will fill your heart with hope today.

So much love,

Mackenzie