Author Archives: Chayli

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I wonder sometimes why life is the way it is, why seemingly every moment is tinged with something that doesn’t belong. There are no moments of pure happiness nor of pure sorrow. Laughter is etched with tears, and pain is softened by joy. Why does everything in life taste so bittersweet?

Then I think of how it’d be to be purely happy. No worry, no pain, no tears. Just overwhelming happiness. And I realize that these mortal bodies and these frail minds likely couldn’t even handle that kind of joy. Nor could they bear such uninhibited anguish. Without a smile or a beam of light to soothe sorrow, we would break irrevocably.

We are so weak and fragile, not because God made a mistake when He designed us but because He wants us to have to rely on Him. There is no sorrow that can overwhelm us if we walk with our hand in the Father’s, nor will He allow unadulterated joy to destroy us. He tempers delight with despair, and vice versa, for our own good.

And that, to me, is beautiful. The ache behind the smiles reminds me that He is good, and the ray of light in every dark place tells me again how incredibly much He loves me. ...continue reading →

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Most people don’t get to live extraordinary lives, at least not the way we tend to think of extraordinary. We look at our jobs and our homes and our friends, and it is all so ordinary. There’s nothing that sets us apart from anyone else, not like those missionaries in Africa witnessing to unreached tribes or that neighbor down the street who always seems to have the best the world can offer. The divide between us and them looks insurmountable sometimes, and perhaps it is.

But the gap between ordinary and extraordinary, on the other hand. . . that’s actually very small, small enough to be bridged by one little word.

Wonder.

Yes, wonder. Remember when you were an Indian on the warpath and the white men you captured wouldn’t cooperate as real captives should? Remember all those tea parties with little princess friends and sometimes even the queen of England? Remember turning stumps to bears and embroidery frames to halos? We all knew what it was to wonder once. The world was real, and it was alive, and we played a very big part in what that world became. But the older we get, the harder it is to hold onto that sense of wonder we had as children. So often, “real” life gets in the way. We can’t just imagine anymore. We have work to do, school to attend, families to feed.

We’re too busy to wonder. It doesn’t happen naturally anymore, not like when we were young. So make wonder a choice. ...continue reading →

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Moments.

Life is made up of them. Some of them are exhilarating, others depressing. Quite a few of them are actually downright boring. There’s no way of knowing when one moment will end and when the next will begin or if a moment that began in joy will end in pain, and vice versa. But one thing is true about all of them: they are fleeting.

That’s part of the beauty of life. No moment lasts forever. They come and go, and though we cannot hold them, we know that more will follow, and who is to say that those will not be more lovely than the ones we cling to now? Through all the changeableness of life, through the moments we hold tightly and the ones we wish would end, there is one constant, and that is the One Who created us. ...continue reading →