I see you, God.

Will we ever learn to do without?

I look at that sentence and I want to take it apart and find out what "do" is and what "without" is, and whether the rest of the world is beginning to see the lifelessness of without. The pointlessness of do when it stands alone.

I am weary of doing without life. I want to write. I want to let my story out the way I used to, when it would crawl around in my head and flow out my fingers and make me full of finishedness, whether the sky was blue or grey.
I've been doing without because that one Creator, who can be so subtle, took it out from under me, soundlessly. The people in my head were gone. I knew who they were, but now they were like friends of friends, acquaintances, rather than my lifeblood.
I've been doing without peace, because I was a close friend of sorrow, and still am some days. Sorrow is healing, but it is heavy, and it's hard to do anything lively while holding sorrow's hand. I couldn't close my eyes and feel quiet. Sorrow pressed even that away from me.
I've been doing without conversation with the stranger. I've been clutching what words I could find, but the only ones I could see were those spoken and listened to by the ones I know well. I need the stranger, and the one who is unlike me, to help me scrape the deadness off me.
I've done without patience, because I am not like the Waiting Boy. I don't know how to stand at the end of the lane, perfectly still, waiting for a storm to rush in and tell me what to do.

I haven't done without music, or friends, or the beauty of the earth. But that one Creator came one step too close today, and I heard Him. His breath lifted the hair on my neck, and I knew He was there. The clouds drifted like doors, and flocks of birds wheeled in and out of each other, and I knew then.

I see you, God. I know you took all those things away, and I only see it now that you're giving them back, slowly. I am astonished to find that my hands can hold more and my heart doesn't overflow as quickly.
I see. For a moment. Keep my eyes wide open, and those clouds pulled back, and let me see every day that you mean everything.

And I'm trying to make you sing
From inside where you believe
Like it's something that you need
Like it means everything

And I'm trying to make you feel that
This is for real, that life is happening
That it means everything
I'm just trying to make you sing
-David Crowder