Feels Like Midnight

Running and I are not friends. There are reasons for this. Good reasons. For now, let’s just say I am anatomically incompatible with the sport. My hubby, however, loves running. So much so, that he will sacrifice sleep to be out pounding the tar. Some days he gets up so early, the birds and worms are all still tucked under their duvets, snoring.

It was one of those mornings about a week ago that I was up with him. The race he'd signed up for started on the road to Stutterheim and ended 42km’s away on the other side of town. I suggested that he run back to fetch his car afterwards but strangely he wasn’t too keen on that idea. (Odd, hey?)  

As we drove to the start, a profound realisation hit me. The clock told me that it was 5am, but if I looked out the window, it might as well have been midnight. The streetlights, the moon... the odd car driving around. It looked, felt and sounded exactly like midnight. Even my bed-missing body agreed. Yet within half an hour, everything changed. The sky drifted from pitch to dappled pastels, bird-noise filled in the silence and the temperature climbed a few degrees. 

I could almost hear Jesus clear his throat... 

When we live hoping for our dreams to be realized... waiting for the publishing contract to land in our inbox, the email from a reader who found transforming Truth in the folds of our words... it often feels like midnight. The darkness hangs thick around us - rejection letters, working a regular job each day when all we want to do is write. Some days one simply cannot see how things could ever change. I remember feeling like fool for hoping for something so far out of reach. 

Here's the thing: 

Today could be your 5am. You could be one email away from your book contract. One sentence away from changing someone's eternal destiny. One word away from throwing a line of hope to someone with nothing left to hold onto.

So don't give up just because it looks like you'll never come out of the dark. 

Don't stop because it feels as if He has forgotten you.

Everything He promised, He will do.

He is faithful and perfect in his faithfulness.  

Dianne J. Wilson is a freelance writer and novelist from East London, South Africa. She is mom to three girls and wife to Scott, who, being the only male other than the St Bernard, is horribly outnumbered and has learnt to dodge flying hormones.

Her first 'official' novel, Finding Mia, releases from Pelican / Harbourlight in June 2015.

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