Yesterday I couldn't get my mind off of a specific memory I have from a few years ago. It was my sophomore year of college and there had been a boy (of course) that had been filling up my time and mind for a few weeks. We were having a great time... and then suddenly, it was gone. No explanation. So one night in my apartment, I sat with some friends. Good friends, the kind you never forget. And they sat there and held me as I cried. But I wasn't just crying for him. I didn't love him and I hadn't expected it to last. No, I was crying because I felt the pain, the loneliness, the emptiness of a broken world. I longed to matter, to have some kind of significance, and for a few weeks, I felt it from him. And then, just as it was really beginning to sink in, it was stolen. I was left, not just without significance, but completely and utterly worthless. Yearning for the life I was meant to live, for the woman I was meant to be. Yearning to see my Father's face and walk next to him. But overwhelmingly aware that in a garden, long ago, we all lost that life we were meant for.



Everyone feels it now and then. Some more often than not. We were created for something different than this and our hearts ache for it. My friends, holding me on either side that night, knew they could do nothing to change it. They too were a part of the broken world. But they shined the one light that can break through the darkness. In the middle of my pain, I felt true love. Not romance, not infatuation. I saw my friends' love for me on their shoulders, soaked in my tears. It was almost as if God himself, the God who is Love, was holding me in his safe, loving arms.



If in my life I can shine that light to a broken world, a hurting people, or even just one aching person, my life will have mattered. I have no greater desire than this: to love.