Laughing Tears

When life is stable you smile and laugh. You think you know what what is good, what is right, what is true.

But when the sun falls – wow. Were you ever wrong.

So wrong.

What were you thinking? It was all an illusion… a rainbow that blinded your eyes from being able to see the truth that life is hard.

Yet you are in the habit of laughing. You are in the habit of believing the best about everyone.

How can you change?

How can you know how to bring back the sun?

You still laugh… but tears join that laughter. It is hollow and deep all at once.

It hurts to laugh, to cry. But the numb feeling of just living is just as bad.

Laughing tears. That is your life.

Bitter-sweet.

You cling to the sweet to not be overcome by the ugliness of the bitterness. But life and pain are so subtle, so mean.

Like a rainbow shining in a thunder storm, so I smile as my heart cries.

You don't know what lies to ignore, what truths to cling onto.

Color is void, gone with the rainbow. Nothing is black and white. It's all black.

Dark, deep, black.

You fight the tears. You beg for the joy to return to your laughter.

But the tears are your comfort.

The joy is your enemy: a lie.

How could life be like this, you ask? How could everything be one way, then change? Why must sin exist? Why must pain invite itself into your life? Why must words hurt so?

Why must God feel so far away? And why is it so hard to distinguish truth from experience?

You can't know.

You can't smile.

You are strong… you are told. But, you know otherwise. You are weak. You are frail. You are broken, alone, desperate.

Desperate for someone to understand and say that it's not all you. That the rainbow was not an illusion, but the darkness.

You pray to God that the darkness will disappear and the sun rise again.

And maybe, just maybe, your prayer will be answered.

Just to keep hoping, to let the tears loose, to not believe anything but truth.

And to act and change in God's love.

To just live and cry, that is all the strength you have.

The rest is up to God and His kindness.

Let His kindness be merciful, let Him grant you rainbows in life once more.