Gusts.

Man's praise only goes so far. It can only let me be happy for a minute, elated and joyful for a moment, or even a day, or a week, or years, when I think back on a compliment or a smile and feel a glow, a burst of pride inside of me.

But it doesn't last. No matter how I try, I can't live with joy, trying to keep it up with spurts of love and occasional moments. I can't. I know I try so often. Like a balloon or a plastic bag, getting puffs of air to fill it up, floating along, starting to deflate, sinking, rolling along the ground until another gust comes along to fill it up with shallow happiness that
    isn't
        eternal.

That deflation, sinking, back into the darkness -
it's a miserable feeling.
Hopeless, really.

Because it all can't fulfill the joy I seek and hunger for, the love I was made to know and feel and seek.

I so often forget, and turn back to people around me and myself and sin, I so often forget about people, how they aren't my hope, they aren't who I am made to please.
I was made to worship my King.

It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.

It is. How blind I become . . . always.

He's my hope. He's my song, the water for my thirsty soul.
God, please never let me forget that.
I don't know what to say, I really don't,

but thank you for reminding me of that tonight.
I love when you open my eyes.
I love you.