contradictions

do i contradict myself?
very well then, i contradict myself.
i am large.
i contain multitudes.
-walt whitman

i adore this quote. it basically describes my life.
now, i feel that i need to qualify that statement. one would initally read that and think that i am a hypocrite. being human and imperfect, there are certainly times where i say one thing and do another. but i don't think that is what this is talking about. it's more of a paradox, where two seemingly contradictory statements actually makse sense.

it's laughing while you cry,
crying while you laugh,
feeling joy in the middle of sadness,
finding beauty in brokeness.

it makes me think of a david crowder song, "beautiful collision". one of the lines is, "the heart breaking makes a sound, beautiful and loud."

how is a broken heart beautiful? that's not what most people would think of. they would think of pain, sadness, lonliness, and other negative things. but not beauty. so try looking at it a different way. it's beautiful to be able to look around at the pain and suffering in the world have it break your heart because it breaks God's heart. you begin to see that the sin in the work has hurt people and messed everything up, but God still loves them beyond anything that we could imagine.

it is so beautiful to know that when everything and everyone has hurt you and let you down, and you feel totally and utterly forsaken, God is there. and suddenly, it doesn't hurt as much.

i keep trying to explain exactly what i am feeling and thinking so that it makes sense, but i can't. i just seem to earase line after line, and keep deletign paragraphs. and i realized that it is because i can't make sense of this. you can't look at it from the world's point of view. if you aren't in love with God, you wouldn't understand how i can ask God to do what ever it takes, however horrible that may be, to make some one see Him, and still say that i love that person. you wouldn't understand why i would ask God to break my heart with what breaks His. and you wouldn't understand why i would pray that i die to myself every day, asking for help in making others the focus of my life. you wouldn't understand any of this, because you would be looking at it from the world's point of view.

but if you look at it in view of God's mercy, then God is all that matters.

i lose sight of that so much, that nothing but God really counts. but every now and then, i get a glimps of what that means and there is nothing more glorious.