the Great love.

When I woke, I was so full of…love. I shall try to describe it.

I am so full of love that causes me almost as much pain as it does joy. It feels like I will get a surge of pain rise up in my chest and almost make me weep, when an overwhelming relief of joy crashes like a wave and consumes the pain.

At that moment, I am full of joy for where the Lord has brought me.

It is a mix of hurt for how I have acted or how distant I feel from people I love. My heart reaches out to them across the nation, yet I cannot feel them. I remember all of the best memories I have had over the last few years and love them and the people I was with, but then the pang that makes me realize that those same places with those same people will most likely never be again.

It is a longing and a yearning and a loneliness of sorts, all at the same time.

Yet, I am consumed by a warm joy. I am grateful for the time with those who are no longer running with me. I see the faces of those who still are. I see the faithfulness of my closest friends and marvel.

Their faithfulness manifests something of God’s nature that is new and fresh with every day they call or contact me.

I am so satisfied in where God has brought me; totally at ease which mixes with the pains of lost friends and loved ones.

The only thing that I know that can swirl pain and joy at the same time is love. I am consumed by love; a different kind of love that I am used to. This kind of love only consumes me once in a while.

It is a Great love.
It is an immense love.

It is a love so broad that it breaks the borders of my reality.
It spans my entire lifetime and all my adventures.
It encompasses the pain, the good times, the lonely times, the fears of the unknown, and shapes those things into gratefulness, passion for the mission and an intense love.

This is a day of the Great love.

Great love is a brief moment where all silence of our lifetime deafens the static noise of day-to-day life. A silence so disconcerting that I would stop my car in the middle of the road and look to the sky, and up and down the valley for a sign of this silence's origin.

Great love spans throughout our life from beginning to end and in that brief moment, total gratitude, total appreciate for life, total realization of life, hits in the depths of my chest and stops me from all.

I want to praise and weep. I want the moment to stop because it hurts, but I want the moment to never end because I can see everyone I have loved even though I can't touch them.

I want to run with those who are still with me in a vision so big I can't see it end to end; I can only feel it.

This is the day of Great love.