I THINK I JUST BROKE MY OWN HEART

I really detest moving. Maybe it's because I'm a deep feeler or a sentimental sap, but letting go of familiar people and things is just really difficult for me.

After lunch today, I decided it was time to take some photos of my set design models (otherwise known as maquettes) and say good-bye to them. So I went downstairs to the basement, retrieved them from their dusty little corner and brought them up into the light where I could get some good pictures of them. Being satisfied with the pictures I took, I went ahead and cleared the set pieces off the "stages" and started ripping apart the walls of the boxes.

I had four of them in total - pretty much all that I had to show for my four years in university. Two of them were particularly well done with lots of minute detail painstakingly formed and painted. One was my graduating project; my thesis, if you will. Hours and hours of time had gone into them. And in a matter of minutes, they'd become a pile of bent foamcore, paper, dried glue and paint.

It wasn't until I threw the last piece into the garbage bag that I was suddenly horrified by what I had done: I had just destroyed my own creation. Grief had never felt that sharp to me as it did in that moment. It was as if my theatre dream died along with those models.

I know maquettes are really minor things in light of eternity. But I really wonder whether God feels that kind of grief when He watches thousands upon thousands of people die, or millions of souls heading to destruction. Perhaps that's why He made the promise to Noah that He would never flood the entire earth again - it's just too painful to destroy one's own work.

And going through this experience, I have greater compassion for those whose homes were demolished by the earthquake and cyclone. How deep their sense of loss must be.

But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand.
~Psalm 10:14a~