Sarah McLachlan once sang, “I feel just like I’m sinking and I claw for solid ground…”

In many ways I think that is what the world feels like these days, isn’t it? Whether we are looking at the political spectrum or straining to get rid of the mitigation measures that have ruled our waking days these many months, or if, like me, you are in the throes of your own personal battle – in many ways it feels as though we are sinking down with no land in sight.

And our limbs are tired from treading.

The fight has been long-going these many months, or years, or decades, or centuries (depending on the battle of which we speak). Putting even one more foot forward may feel like pushing a mountain of earth. Pulling in a single breath may require our last bit of effort to lift the elephant sitting squarely upon our chest. Doing anything at all, even opening our eyes, may seem just…

But then somehow, the sun blinks through. Even on days when it does not shine. Something, someone maybe, turns our head and makes just a hint of a smile creep back onto our lips. With no effort required. The crack grows and bubbles and sparkles until the effervescent sound of laughter erupts from our mouths and shakes us to our very core. Our eyes overflow, our stomachs ache, and we probably cannot even remember what began our smile. Yet, somehow, that light has found a way.

That light gives us strength. It reminds us why we keep going. It warms us when the storm waters threaten to swallow us whole. That flicker beyond us reignites the embers within so that we can put one foot in front of the other and keep on fighting and striving and living for as long as we can.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then on some level I am happy for you that you have not yet had to experience the messy and difficult parts of life. But for everyone else, my encouragement to you is that remember the poem scrawled by the hand of our sibling in the German concentration camp:

I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. I believe in love even when I don’t feel it. I believe in God even when God is silent.

Keep swimming. The light is there. The love is there. God is there.

No matter what.