It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn

There’s a girl you know, or maybe just know of.  She used to be happy.  Joyful.  Cheerful.  Always smiling.  But something has changed.  She’s been told her smile isn’t as bright….that it doesn’t reach her eyes anymore.  If you’re close to her,  you might know why, or you might just wonder why but don’t want to ask.  You’ve  watched her change right before your eyes.  You watched as she began to laugh less.  And smile less.  You watched as she lost her song.  She has been asked about…..and talked about.  She’s been questioned on whether she has lost her faith.  On whether she has been faithful to read His word regularly, to seek Him in all things, to pray.  The answer is NO.  She hasn’t lost her faith.  It’s the one thing she clings to….the one thing that keeps her going.  The answer is YES….she kept seeking Him, turning to His Word, and praying even though she has felt those prayers kept bouncing back at her.  She’s  had to.  She doesn’t know how else to live.  Her faith is as real to her as the air she breathes….she doesn’t know how to live without it and doesn’t want to, doesn’t know how NOT to pray….sometimes she lacked the words, often times it was just crying out His name and knowing that He could see her heart and hear the words she couldn’t find.  She’s been filled with confusion and hurt.  With PAIN.  She has been mad at God….YES, mad.  She has questioned Him, has cried out to Him, has yelled at Him….but she hasn’t turned away from Him.  She knows that He’s a big God and can take it…that He knows her heart and her hurt, that He can handle her emotions….that if there’s anyone it’s safe to be REAL with….it’s Him.

She’s felt like just a shadow of her former self….and the changes in her, her visible descent,  began long before it showed.  You never knew what lied underneath her laugh and her smile….but there was something there before they were  gone.  She’s been on a journey so painful, it’s threatened to do her in.  She’s been stuck in a realm of confusion and indecision, of a 2 steps forward, 3 steps back process of awakening and enlightenment that left her in a holding pattern, hovering over which direction to take to break out of it….feeling so close to reaching bottom but never actually touching down.  Her closest friends have wanted to push her, prod her, somehow  get her moving….hurting as they watched her hurt and feeling helpless.  It wasn’t something they could do for her….she had to do it herself.   And she couldn’t.  Not until she knew for sure…..and she couldn’t find a way to know for sure.  It took something coming into her life, briefly and completely unexpectedly….something she never imagined would be there….to break her holding pattern and cause her to make the final descent to the depths that were  bottom.  To shake her up completely, to just give out in every way….to cause her to see what was happening to her….to the person she had once been, and would continue to happen if she didn’t come out of her fog.

That emotional bottom is paralyzingly dark….so dark, you wonder if you’re going to stop breathing and have to force yourself at times not to.  Days of  functioning  just enough to get the basics done….because life goes on whether you’re up to it or not…. while the tears won’t stop and the burning, clenching ache in your throat, your chest, your stomach just won’t let up.  She spent sleepless nights curled up around that ache….spent sobbing into her pillow, crying out desperately for the Lord to just SHOW UP….pleading for Him to turn His face towards her again, begging for His deliverance, for His clarity and firm direction on what to do, for Him to reach out and lift her up out of this pit of confusion, to finally hear His voice again.  And in those darkest hours, while her children are sleeping and all is quiet….everything she’s lived, every painful memory, every hurtful word and glare and experience….every bruise on her body and soul is relived in excruciating detail and she can’t make her brain stop thinking.  She can’t hear His voice no matter what she does, no matter how her heart longs to.  She reaches an exhaustion she didn’t know it was possible to live through.  And then….in the darkest of nights, the voice of the One to whom she had sought and the music she kept playing but couldn’t hear….slowly began to speak.  Through the darkest of the dark, He came.  It was just the faintest glimmer, like the hesitant glimmer of the most distant star breaking through the clouds on the stormiest of nights….but it was there.  And she clung to it.  All night long.  And when daybreak came, she still couldn’t see that path laying out before her, brightly illuminated so that she could see days ahead or months ahead or the clearing on the other side.  But she saw a stepping stone.  Just one.  And it was clearer than clear in which direction she should go to find her way to the dawn.

She’s still broken and hurting and scared and isn’t healed yet.  She’s still at that bottom….but she’s no longer lying on it.  She’s standing on it.  Her legs are shaky and her knees are weak and her step onto that first stepping stone  is tentative….but sure.  And she knows what she’s supposed to do…..and she knows that if she’s had to live what she’s lived, and has to travel this journey she’s on, you can bet it won’t be wasted.  She knows that part of her healing lies in the telling, the surrender of writing her way through her journey.  She’s known for a long time that she is supposed to, she just has been too afraid to.  She keeps stumbling upon women upon women with similar stories….feeling trapped and hurting, needing someone to see the pain in their eyes and respond to it….to reach out, speak to, listen to and identify with their most hurtful of hurts.  She knows without a doubt that her pain, her story, her journey….is not her own, to keep to herself.    Others need to hear it.  Others are caught in that painful, soul-wrenching, imprisoning, joy-stealing, oppressive, stagnant fog and are desperately trying to find their way out.  They need to know they’re not alone.  They need to know they’re not crazy and need help finding their  way out. 

She’s still afraid to write it.  She’s afraid to click that “publish” button that will mark the beginning.  It’s hard….and it’s going to hurt.  But she’s already hurt more than anyone ever should and knows that in this hurt, this surrender to doing something so hard but knows she’s called to do…lies a step to that healing she’s desperate for.  It leads to another stepping stone and to that clearing along the path that she can’t see.

Not yet, anyway.  But she believes it’s there, she KNOWS it is…..beyond her vision, but not beyond His. Her vision is dark….but His.....HIS vision leads out of the darkness and into the dawn. 

Have Your Way

I'm sitting here in a house that was my haven, curled up with a blanket that I remember seeing laying on top of my Granny the last time I saw her.  In the dark, alone, and I can't stop crying.  In the living room, looking out the front window, through the sheer curtains, to the moonlit front yard beyond.  Looking at the massive, dark, shape of the magnolia tree....overgrown and luminous in the dark, its presence making all the other trees in the yard look like lightweights in comparison.  Sleep eludes me once again, and worn and weary doesn't even begin to describe me at the moment.  A dream woke me up, like so many times recently, and I can't find my way back to sleep again.  I wish I wasn't alone.....and know I'm not.  I never am......He is here with me, listening and reminding me of scriptures and Truths, but I wish someone, a person, was here with me.  One of the ways He loves us is through His people after all, and I wish someone was with me now, to hold my hand, to pray with me.....to just be a comforting presence.  But I'm here in the dark, on a couch I've sat on so many times before, with the shapes and forms of familiar furniture and household things keeping me company, crying tears as quietly as I can.

And thinking, thinking, thinking......thinking through dreams and so many things that crowd and clutter my head and burden my heart.  He hears all my thoughts, because in all that thinking, I'm talking to Him......and I know that He sees each and every tear.  The phrase of Him collecting them all in a bottle keeps going through my head, as that phrase has kept popping up here and there recently, seeing and reading it so many times.

Thinking about all the things I've said to Him the past few months.  Conversations I've had with God, whispered prayers, pleas and cries  that go something like this:

 I don't want his, Lord....please make it stop. Please take it from me. 

  I am here. 

 I know You're here, but I don't want this, Lord. I don't want to feel this way, I don't want to think about this anymore. I want to laugh and giggle and smile and be silly. I want to go and do.....and serve....and be happy. I have so much to be happy about. Please, please take it. 

 I am here. 

 Why aren't you listening??? Please take this....all of it. I don't want it. I don't have time for this, don't have time to feel this way. I have no right to feel this way. Are you even listening??? 

 I am here. Right here, with you. 

You're not listening.  Why aren't you listening???  I am no good to You this way.  No good to my family.  No good to my friends.  What is the point of this??  Please, please, please......take it.

I am here.  I am listening.  I have not left you.

Sigh.  I don't know what to do, Lord.  I don't know why You're not taking it.  What am I doing wrong?  I can't keep feeling this way, can't keep going with all of this inside of me.

You don't have to.

Don't You understand how much this hurts??  That I can't even speak the words, that I can't even find them when people ask me what's wrong?? I keep trying to give it to You.  I can barely even pray.  I pray the same thing over and over and over again......when I can even manage to get the words out.  WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO???  

Write.  I didn't show you how to do it for nothing.  

I have.  I have journaled.  Or I have tried to.  I have tried to write, tried to channel my thoughts and feelings, tried to do something with it.

Privately.  Who told you to make it private?

Ummmmmm, NO.  That's not what I put so much work into my blog for.  NO.  No one wants to hear my story or listen to me whine.  NO.

I've never told my story before......only to a select few.  A very select few.  I don't like to go there, don't like to go back.  Going back is uncomfortable.  It hurts.  I can tell you about when I was saved.  I can tell you details about my life after my salvation.  But I don't go back.  I've never seen the point, never been willing to go there........and dread and avoid situations in Christian circles where they want you to tell your testimony.  I begin with my salvation and move forward.....and people look at me like, that's it??  Yes.....that's it.  Nothing here to tell.  Nothing exciting or dramatic in comparison to some.  Move on now.  It's always made me so very uncomfortable.  I just don't go there.  I change the subject.  Or find something to laugh at.  Or ask someone a question that shifts the focus off of me and gets them talking about something else.  Anything else.  I hate to have the focus on me.

Although I'm trying with all my might, I'm not being very successful at talking Him into taking this from me, at pushing, pushing, pushing it away.  At least one thing is clear.  There's something I'm supposed to do with it.  Because if He has me here in this place, for this long, and He won't take it from me, there must be a reason. A reason and a purpose and an outcome I can't see.

Last year was the worst year I can remember having and I can't have another year like that one.   I don't want to be here, but I am......and it hurts in way, it hurts so deeply, that I don't know if I could ever find the adequate words to describe it. But I have faith that He will bring me through it, that He will help me find my place of rest.....and just like so many times before.....just like when I look back on those memories I push away because they hurt too much and yet can see through the pain how He worked it all out for good.....I know that He will work this for good, too.

And if I have to be here despite my best efforts not to be, then I want Him to use it. Even if it means saying yes and exposing more of myself than I am comfortable with in a way I've fought so long and hard not to.

Maybe, like me, you don't know exactly how you got where you are.  Maybe life was already making you a little weary and the weariness of life and current day worries and stresses collided with events that shook your world during one summer in a way that left you reeling......that collision bringing with it memories that assaulted you with a breathtaking, gut-wrenching pain you didn't know existed.  Memories that caused feelings to surface that you thought had long ago been settled....bringing forth emotions that you didn't even know were there within you, just waiting to be excavated and brought to the surface.  And well-meaning people look at you curiously and ask what's wrong & those who know a little tell you not to lose your faith and to pray and to give it to the Lord......and you look at them and tell them you'll be fine, that you're just going through a stressful time.  You smile and say "thank you" and you want to get them to see that you haven't lost your faith at all.  That you have been praying.  Not the long, intense, deep and eloquent prayers that used to come easily, but the broken, fragmented cries of the heart, the constant wonderings and ponderings and pleas, the praying you pray from your soul all day long without ceasing, broken fragments and uneloquent at times, but constant all the same.  You want them to understand that you haven't lost your faith......that it is clinging to your faith that is all that is getting you through.  Maybe you've started wondering if something is wrong with you, if you've done something wrong and there's something you need to make right with the Lord and then it will all go away.  And you search your heart, each and every part, looking for what it could be.....and you feel so very confused and alone.  Maybe you need to know that you're not alone, that you're not the only one who has ever felt this way......and that there's nothing wrong with your faith.  That you can have a rock-solid, unwavering faith and still feel the way you do.....but it's just what you're walking through.  And what you're walking through is not who you are.  I have a precious friend that has reminded me of that more than once.  (Thank you).

Maybe it's time for me to stop fighting, stop arguing and reasoning with the Lord and pushing it all away when He's obviously not wanting me to yet. Maybe it's time to allow myself the right to feel the pain that I feel and stop telling myself I don't have a right to it  because my story is not as dramatic and traumatic as some.  To allow myself the right to cry and feel it and stop using my genuine and overwhelming thankfulness for what He has done for me, for what could have been but wasn't because He spared me, as justification for my conviction that I don't have a right to feel this way, don't have a right to the level of hurt that I feel.  Maybe it's time for me to tell my story in the way that I know best....to write....because pushing it away isn't working very well and I've got to do something with these thoughts and feelings that plague me.

Maybe, just maybe, there's healing in the telling, and the hope of healing is enough to make me surrender. I don't understand, but......

 I'm ready to let Him have His way.


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Worn, Weary....and in Need of Rest

I'm so very tired, and yet I'm awake. I sleepwalk through most days, sure that I'll collapse into bed each night and sleep blissful sleep......like, the whole night long.

I can't remember the last time I actually did that. Why do the thoughts & memories & hurts that I keep giving to the Lord continue to come back to haunt me? This is the question I'm asking of Him tonight as I lay awake, tossing this way and that, trying to push the thoughts from my mind until I can't take it anymore.....and I find myself here. I had let this go.....had let my domain renewal lapse, determining to let this part of me that can put the things I'm thinking and feeling into written words when I can't find the adequate words to speak....go. I had determined I was done here. No words left. Or maybe, in the middle of the night when I can't sleep yet again, there are some left after all.

I've asked the same question so many times over the past year....."Why do the thoughts & memories & hurts that I keep giving to You continue to come back to haunt me?"  I ask again and again, I give it all to Him again and again.....and find it right back in my lap before I know what has hit me or what I have done to put it back there. I just want to REST.  Sweet, peaceful, contented......Rest. I pray for Rest for my body.....and soul, the kind of rest that I haven't had in what seems like such a very long time. I beg for it desperately and can't seem to find it, and wonder, wonder, wonder....what I'm doing wrong.

I honestly don't know.

I know that I'm tired.  Worn out.  And I'm tired of being tired and word out. There's a big part of me that's broken.  And I desperately need Him to fix it.  Desperate enough to post this post, or maybe just so tired in the middle of the night that I'm delirious & I've lost good judgement and common sense.  Desperate enough to be blatantly transparent and to ask for prayer.   I'll probably regret it in the morning. ;)

I'm leaving tomorrow (or actually, today)  to take a weekend trip that I'm dreading so completely. I don't want to go. I have to be strong and do the right thing and I have to go, but I feel so weary. Never in my life have I felt such weariness and after an emotional week, I'm afraid I can't handle it.  I'm afraid I can't be strong enough and hold back the tears and emotions for those I want to be strong for.

I know His peace and the Rest I pray for will come in His perfect timing.

Please, Lord, let it be soon.  I'm ready.

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Even If The Healing Doesn't Come : Gifts 388 - 397

Giving thanks in all things, even in the hardest of times, even when it hurts....in defiance of the enemy ~ because the one who seeks to render me useless, the one who wants to destroy my peace and steal my joy ~ doesn't want me to.  It's in the giving of thanks for each gift the Lord gives me & of praising Him in the storm that He keeps me going when I'm so weary of the things that weigh me down & keep me up at night, that keep me from giving in completely in many areas when I really, really want to.

388.  for Pumpkin Pie Spice coffee creamer ~ I like it; it's yummy ;)

389.  the smell of Cinnamon Cookies baking

390.  for cooler days & the sound of my children playing outside, wanting to squeeze each moment they can out the daylight.....and even the moonlight.  "But Mom, it feels soooooooo good out here!  Can't we play hide and seek in the dark???"  (yes, I let them)

391.  for the warmth of the sun.....life's been so busy, I haven't taken the time to enjoy it.  I sat outside for just a bit the other day and let warmth of the soothing rays wash over me.  I wish I could have stayed there for a very long time, but even just a few moments was enough to make me breathe a prayer of thanks.

392.  for my children and they way they love me, the way they think I'm awesome and wonderful and amazing in spite of the fact that I feel I'm letting them down, not living up to who I want to be for them.

393.  for the FRIENDS who distract me with their everyday, normal conversations about life, our children,  homeschooling, curriculum, cooking & what's for dinner, choir, making me feel ~ even just for a little bit ~ that all is well with me ......while having no idea of the depths of emotions I am feeling & the inner struggles I am facing.

394.  for the FRIENDS who do know I'm struggling and never cease to bring out a giggle, a laugh, a smile with their silliness and goofiness........it comes naturally to them, and ~ just for a little bit ~ it feels natural to me again, too.  I think they do it on purpose sometimes.

395.  for the FRIEND who also makes me smile & laugh.....but can see past the smile, past the laugh or giggle, past the many ways I try to distract myself and those around me, past the "I'm fine's" and "I'm good's" even when I'm putting on a good performance......to the heart of who I am.  It unnerves me sometimes, but oh, how thankful I am for her.

396.  a much appreciated, much needed and much unexpected hug from another friend.  She said that she didn't know what it was, but she knew something was going on with me and she wanted to give me a hug and let me know she was praying for me.  "You said those exact words to me once and gave me a hug, so now I'm doing it for you".  I had completely forgotten about that, but she didn't.  I'll never forget her hug, either.

397.  a FAITH IN MY GOD that holds strong in spite of whatever comes my way, perhaps the one thing in life I will never doubt, who is my one constant, who is forever faithful, who is good in all things, whom I trust when I can trust no one else.  I may not understand, I may cry out in hurt, in confusion, in desperation, even in anger.  I may stumble, I may fall, I may question so MANY things, but my faith in Him and who He is will never waiver.  Even if my questions are never answered......even the healing doesn't ever come.......until the day that my faith shall be sight, the day I am made complete & the day He wipes the tears from my eyes with His own healing hands and I will never hurt again.

I Need You Now

I haven't been able to write for months. I come here, I browse blogs, I browse my own and contemplate writing something. I click on "new post" and stare at a blank page, then log off. I grab a pen and notebook and stare at another blank page, praying that the words would come, that I could somehow express what's going on within,  then close it and put it back on the shelf.

People want me to talk about things that I can't talk about, or don't want to talk about, things that it hurts to talk about, and they don't understand that I wish I could find the words, but I can't get them out past the lump in m throat, past the pain in my chest, past the aching tension and tightness that extends throughout my core.  I wish I could talk, wish I could write, wish and hope and pray for some outlet for the things that even I don't understand, don't want to think about, and don't know what to do with.  I've never been in a place quite like this before.

I've always had a song to sing, but I can't find my joy.  I can't seem to find a way to connect the words to my heart the way they always just have naturally.  I force it when I have to, when I'm obligated to, but I don't want to have to force it.  What do I do when the words won't come, when I can't find my song......when I don't know what to do?

Sometimes, He'll send me one....He'll call to me in a song, when I think He's forgotten, when I think no one understands, when I feel so very alone..... and the words hit that place just where I am.  It's not even the first time I've heard it, but it's the first time I've really heard it.  I heard the story behind the song, and it caused my ears and heart to tune in.  And as tears fall and nothing has changed, and I'm still in that very same place that I was before, He says to me, softly and quietly, whispering words of comfort to a tired and confused and weary heart, "You're not the only one who's been in this place.....and you're not so alone".

And in the hours of the night spent when sleep won't come, and in the moments of both the day & night when I feel so overwhelmed & incapable & unsure of everything........like so many times before, I've got a song that becomes my prayer.

I Need You Now 

 Well, everybody's got a story to tell 

 And everybody's got a wound to be healed 

 I want to believe there's beauty here 

 So, I get so tired of holding on 

 I can't let go, I can't move on 

 I want to believe there's meaning here 

 Chorus: 

 How many times have you heard me cry out 

 "God please take this"? 

 How many times have you given me strength to 

 Just keep breathing? 

 Oh I need you 

 God, I need you now 

 Standing on a road I didn't plan 

 Wondering how I got to where I am 

 I'm trying to hear that still small voice 

 I'm trying to hear above the noise 

 Chorus:

 How many times have you heard me cry out 

 "God please take this"? 

 How many times have you given me strength to 

 Just keep breathing? 

 Oh I need you 

God, I need you now 

 Though I walk, though I walk through the shadows 

 And I, I am so afraid 

 Please stay, please stay right beside me 

 With every single step I take 

 How many times have you heard me cry out? 

 And how many times have you given me strength? 

Chorus:

 How many times have you heard me cry out 

 "God please take this"? 

 How many times have you given me strength to 

 Just keep breathing? 

 Oh I need you 

God, I need you now

 I need you now 

 I need you now