There's something inside of me that is filled with hope - it cannot be ceased under any circumstance. I have seen tragedy, I have seen death (touched death), I have questioned my sanity, I have doubted my belief, I have fallen apart, I have been broken to pieces, reassembled, then broken again.

I am makeshift.

Yes, I am makeshift. Every day, every moment, I am changing, twisting, turning, building upon what I learn and know, becoming different, becoming new, morphing into myself.

There is an all-encompassing theme to who I am - a being filled with hope. A hope that there is more; there is more than me and my limited human experience. There is a creator of me, a creator of us all; a creator that isn't anything but madly in love with us. For all that we are - our broken pieces, our makeshift lives, our shittiness, our joyousness. We are a sum of love; built by love, broken by love, reassembled by love.

The creator fills the cracks where we've been broken and torn. In the midst of darkness enters the goodness, the fullness, of light. A shining, dazzling, beautiful glint of this feeling identified as hope - a feeling never fully depleted, for it is what gives us the faith to carry on.

Everything was perfect -
and then it broke,
fell, and shattered
on the living room floor -
my sanity, that is.

I'm hoping that
I have to fall apart
to fall back together,
but for now
I am living
with the devil
in my insane mind.

What if I told you
that your life isn't about
constant improvement?
What if I told you,
that in this life,
you don't have to be
anything more than you are.

Let me tell you -
you can not improve yourself.
You, yourself,
as a simple human being,
can not become of more worth
on your own.
I believe this to be an absolute promise.

Look up.
There's a Power up there;
I haven't met the Presense
but I have overwhelming feelings
that It's there when I call out to it.

When do I call out?
I call out when I feel overwhelmed,
bogged down by the pressure
to be better, to do more,
and despite my best, honest attempts
I fail. Over and over.
A vicious cycle
of failing, inferiority, comparison.
It's seemingly never-ending.

I want to improve.
I want to do more, to be more,
to be shiny and new everyday.
To love deeper, to understand fully
what the commotion
around me is all about.

But my little disconnected brain
could not possibly do this
on it's own.
It's limited to
my puny, human understanding,
I'm inefficacious
in changing my path.

So I call out
to this Presence.
It speaks in a voice, unheard,
mysterious, yet understandable.
It tells me that if I want to
be shiny and new,
if I want to be more than I am,
then I have to surrender to It.
I have to give It all that I have.

The pressure to improve is off,
the pressure to be more is off,
the pressure to perform is off.
Because grace has filled in
all the cracks,
even the miniscule cracks,
where I have failed
at being better.

And I find that after I've been mended,
I start discovering the
solution to improving my life
(which I've found to be giving it away).
Constant improvements do not
have to be done by me,
a selfish, stingy human being.
The Presence told me
that It's taking care of them.
And the craziest thing is -
I notice a difference.

What my tiny brain does understand,
after the Presence has engulfed it,
is that I don't have to be
more than I am,
because I am being made wonderful
by something greater than myself. 

Jesus was a different type of person.
It's so hard to be like Him
because He's so incredible.
So, I guess we try and try
and fail and fail.
But we find a glimmer of hope
and try some more.
And fail again.

And it's a learning process.
We learn the beauty of grace
amongst our failures.
And somewhere in the mix we learn
not to be so damn hard on ourselves-
that it's okay to screw up-
we're broken.

It takes a lot of paying attention
to realize how broken we are.
Realization of brokenness is
the best place to be,
because broken people need a Savior.
We need patches, we need hugs,
we need Jesus Christ
in the truest form
of who He is-
Savior of our broken world.