Depressed and cold? And tired?

I can't sleep and I look at the clock and it's 4:00 AM. I've tossed and turned 'till I have only two hours left to sleep-- and the big test is TODAY. I'm tired. Tired of everything. Even tired of sleeping. Hope is dim these days, and the old dark I'd thought far gone, smothers suddenly like a bog. Nothing feels... worth it. I don't feel worth it. 

This week, our big kitchen light exploded. Just exploded. The week before our oven stopped heating. Last month the water heater gave up. Basement flooded. No money to fix anything. 

And I can't help but ask it, "God, don't you care? Why can't life just... work for me?" Why does everyone else have hope, and get excited about the future, and have the ability to live close to their friends, and have romantic relationships and why does that just never make its way to me? Something good? Just something? 

The power goes out on campus. I have no lunch, planned to scrounge for something cheap at the cafeteria, but now I can't even do that. I'm starved. 

A beautiful new friend sits beside me, the slumped and exhausted me, by the lockers in the hallway, in one of the dim emergency lights. We're not supposed to leave. Just wait out the dark. I'm tired of sitting in it. Can't hide from it. 

She yanks from her bag mandarin oranges, cheese crackers, and a squashed cupcake. She shares. We talk, and shockingly giggle, and it's the nicest lunch I can remember having in a long time.  

A test I'd stressed out over, and my instructor smiles and says to the whole class, "A hundred percent. Every single one of you." 

And a girl is hurting and homeless, and because I am just listening to her another hears-- and he actually works for the disadvantaged, and he can help her, and it's a beautiful divine appointment. 

And as I walk paths encompassed in fresh grass and damp with melting snow, it is a strike to the core of me. "Do I CARE? Little girl, I DIED for you-- do I CARE? That is the least that I do!" 

Sometimes aren't the most beautiful moments laughing on the floor of a cold hallway over a squished feast, praising with sudden song in the middle of a chilly street-- in spite of the darkness all around you? And isn't that what we are supposed to be and supposed to savor-- light? Isn't darkness needed to know it? 

Before the sleepless night, I'd happened across this: 

The very next day, today, He brings me to this.

Love. What love! Love-even-in-a-Dr. Seuss-book kind of love!

Don't cry that old goods are gone. Smile that they were... 

You will miss the best of things if you keep your eyes shut... 

Sometimes the questions are complicated, and the answers are simple...

"Do you care?" 

Care is only a merest fragment of the response.