dawnless mornings & seaside sunrises

i live by the atlantic ocean.  every day the sun comes up over the water creating golden poems & coral prose. some days i'm there to watch it all unfold like my favorite story.  but not most days.  most days i'm cuddled in my bed...glorying in those coveted moments when my husband leaves for work and i get the whole bed to myself.  i've gotten up for the atlantic sunrise a handful of times since i've lived here...and each time i am convinced that the golden show was worth every minute of lost sleep.  each seaside sunrise is my Father's gift to me.

i can't see a sunrise without it reminding me of a sept 4 years ago where when the sun didn't come up quite so beautifully.  i was driving in my car...after a sleepless night.  "the" night after which my life would never be the same.  my husband of 7 years had just told me our story together was over.  i knew it was coming...things were bad...but i couldn't have been more devastated.   after staying up all night in shock, trying to figure out what my tomorrow looked like, i jumped in the car and decided to drive towards the sunrise.  i was hoping the sunrise would be God's love letter to me the very morning i thought i needed it most.  so i drove east and cried.  i drove into a black sky that slowly turned a shade of darkest indigo and then slate...and then light gray and finally white and it started to rain.  that was the morning the sun didn't come up.  the one damn morning i really needed it to.  i was watching and waiting.  i wanted the pink and yellow sunrise to be my link to the God who painted it.  i wanted this sunrise to symbolize a life of me putting one foot in front of the other and doing life alone  and THAT morning...the sun came up quietly behind clouds.  no gold.  no coral.  no poetry or prose. no love letter to a lost soul.  i begged God for a brilliant sunrise.  and i cried all the harder when it didn't happen...not even a few golden rays.

the next few months after my dawnless morning were a pure and simple miracle.  somehow, as only He could, God put me AND my marriage back together.  He didn't just tape the broken pieces together with duck tape either--He sewed it like a tapestry...making the ugly, broken pieces look like His best artwork.  i won't lie--it was hard.  it hurt.  there weren't many sunrises...most mornings looked quite gray.  but He made something from nothing.  He created something beautiful in me through such an ugly time.  because i had come through the worst i was fearful of nothing.  i learned who i was and what was important.  the God of the universe pruned my life and gave me and my husband a partnership we never had before.  we trudged through this dawnless season and came out on the other side, together.

today i live by the atlantic ocean.  me and my husband of 11 years and our 2 beautiful kids.  every day the sun comes up over the water creating golden poems and coral prose. The great God of the universe might not have given me a sunrise over some soggy missouri soybean field that morning 4 years ago but every day i live here He makes it up to me.  i've come to the conclusion that i was asking the wrong question on that dawnless day. i was asking God for a simple soybean sunrise to tell me i would be okay ALONE.  He didn't wanna make that promise to me.  He didn't wanna send me that love note.  He had a little something else in mind.  a lot of pain, a bit of growth and hundreds of special oceanside sunrises with my childhood sweetheart by my side. today i am a stay at home momma who gets to write and read and walk by the ocean.  i get to paint and create and dream big dreams with nothing holding me back.  today i know myself deeper and more fully because in those miraculous months after the sun didn't come up i begged God to tell me who i was...and He did.  the last few years my life look alot more like i always wanted it to and never dreamed it really could.  i get to live life next to a man that lives his dreams and plots on how we can better raise our little family.  a man who chooses life instead of the fog of work and admiration and success he used to be lost in.  a partner i can lean on and respect.  today, God busies Himself giving me gifts like these i didn't know to ask for.  gifts i take for granted like the atlantic sunrises i often sleep through.  This Father of mine gives the best gifts--not the ones we ask for, but the ones we don't even know are available.  not the one lonely sunrise but countless seaside dawns lovelier than my wildest imaginings.