Borrowing Hope.

My heart is so full tonight. Life had seemed to be getting away from me; you know, like there was too much to do in a day so that I couldn't please all the people around me all the time and keep them thinking I'm awesome and keep them liking me. That was my version of life being out of control.

But this...

My heart is hurting for a dear friend of mine tonight. Jamie, my dearest friend, is getting married this Sunday. You may have read about Jamie, she's just one of my people so she comes up a lot. So don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled she's getting married, I even posted when she got engaged because I was so happy for her. It's just that, she's not supposed to get married until next week. We had the date. We had the rentals. We had the photographer and the caterer. But Tuesday she and Nate, her fiance, received news that his mom was going into the hospital. Nate's mom has been fighting cancer for about a year. It's been a short, swift fight, and now it appears to be a losing one. Tuesday they found that she has pneumonia in her lungs. Now they're sending her home on Hospice. So, Jamie and Nate, being the selfless people they are, are moving their wedding day to this Sunday and getting married in Nate's parents back yard so that she can be there. I say they are selfless people, and I mean that. They honestly wouldn't have a wedding any other way.

The doctors haven't given us much hope for her recovery or even a promising timeline. Family can't change their flights and come earlier. Jamie's brother's won't be there, nor will her best friend from home. Our Bethany can't come, who was Jamie's roommate and confidante for three years at Moody, and life the third to our Three Amigos group.

There just isn't much hope in this situation...or so I thought.

This looming loss is debilitating and heavy, yes. But there's so much joy and refreshment in the celebration of their marriage. What an enormous tension to live in - on one hand sorrow and on the other joy; on one side loss and the other gain. And yet these emotions are mingled and mixed into a big soup of feeling in which I can't pull one thing out from another. I can't separate tears from laughing or happy memories of Nate and Jamie's first date from the memory of the first time she met his mom or the memory of that late night phone call when she told me the doctors found a lump. They're all mixed together and I can't identify or separate or define them. Nor do I want to.

So, tomorrow I'm leaving for Indiana. And there I will cry and celebrate, mourn and rejoice. Pray for me? Because see, there's so much longing and not enough hope to go around. And where do we turn when we're left with the empty plate? How do we borrow hope off a neighbor or a friend? Where do we run when we run out of time?

Help me run to You, Master Healer. I need You. We need You. Please com.