Living in the Gray Realms

Lately I have been struggling to live in a world overwhelmed by shades of gray. It has been as if there were a gray fog coating everything in my life, as if someone had Photoshoped my life and reduced the contrast and the color saturation. Sounds were discordant and blunted. The song in my heart had petered out. Worst of all, food lost its savor. Life seemed just a succession of doomed battles. All that began to change yesterday after I read the closing chapters of a good book.
About a month ago I ordered the final book in a series that I had started reading a few years ago. The series, The Lamb Among the Stars by Chris Walley, is a Christian science fiction fantasy dealing with the end times through a long term post-millennial view point. In his blog he says that "the background of the Lamb Among the Stars series is as follows. After an unparalleled spiritual revival (the ‘Great Intervention') the human race survives the 21st century and during a long period of grace, peace and blessing, spreads out among the stars. Then, in the year 13,851 evil returns to the most distant of the inhabited worlds and once more men and women must battle with the sin and wrong." Since it had been so long since I had read the first books, I reread them before starting The Infinite Day.
In the books some of the characters travel through something called Below-Space or the Gray Realms. There all color disappears while other things appear. While I was reading, this really struck a cord with me because this is exactly what I had been feeling. When I came to the end of the last book I found hope because the end of the book is the beginning of the infinite day. I think I forget sometimes that Black Beauty's mother was right when she said, "twill all come right some day or night," and it will because God holds the future in his hand. I love it in The Lord of the Rings when Samwise and Frodo talk about being the heroes in a tale. I think we are all called to be the heroes of our life stories. When the story seems like a tragady, we just need to remember who the Author is. He is the only one who knows how the story ends.