In a season of weeping for those who weep {Psalm 84.8 Memory Verse}...

I can't remember another season quite like this one. 

The deaths over the past week of five precious souls - from the unborn and six to eighty-seven - and those who loved them most here on earth consume my thoughts and prayers.

Every night, I fall asleep whispering their names in prayer. 

Thank you, LORD, for hearing us and for comforting those whose hearts are broken as they walk through the Valley of Weeping.

Selah

Forgetting to breathe {and Psalm 84.5 memory verse}...

The winter days here on Pollywog Creek have been muggy, gray and gloomy - not the cool and sunny days we {and the snow birds who migrate south} have always known winter to be at the edge of the tropics. It's been a reflection of a grief I've been wrestling to shake.

The new year holds hard transitions before me, and my heart has been heavy with grieving the changes to come that taunt and mock my here-and-now joy.

The physical therapist straps two-pound weights on my ankles, and half way through her prescribed routine that stretches and strengthens the muscles and ligaments around my surgery-scarred knees, my heart begins to race and I realize I'm forgetting to breathe. 

A month ago, shortly after the last surgery when pain was at it's worst and it was all I could do to hold onto the walker and move from the bed to the chair, I'd listened to Mark Talbot's message on suffering: 

Losing perspective in suffering is stifling; it is like forgetting to breathe. More particularly, we Christians can forget that we are never alone, no matter what we are undergoing, because God is with us, just as he was with those saints who have been in similar straits before. Sometimes we are especially prone to forget when we are dealing with some chronic disability of our own or of one of our loved ones that seems to just be going on and on, with no end in sight. We need then, especially, to be reminded to breathe in the word that God has breathed out for us (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

The Scriptures record a lot of suffering because God’s people have never been free of it, not even from the kinds and degrees that can overwhelm God’s most stalwart saints. Indeed, when Job’s suffering seemed to him to be neverending, he actually accused God of keeping him from catching his breath (see Job 9:18, NLT). Yet his story finally conveys that, as awful as his situation was, much of what he needed to hear was something like this: “Breathe! Don’t panic! Slow yourself down! Don’t take everything to be as it seems. And don’t irrationally conclude that things will never get better.”

Mark Talbot

As Talbot suggests, I begin to breathe - breathing out laments and breathing in grace. God is good and He is with me. I breathe deep, word-soaked breaths and my heart is slowed and strengthened for the journey.

To be a light...

I know what it's like to exchange my robe of righteousness for shame - to cower alone in darkness and hide from the light that exposes my sin and to lick my wounds with bitterness.    

It's the enemy of our souls that wants us to linger in dark places and hide from the light we fear...the light that reveals our sins and brokenness, I tell my friend who knows this hiding in brokenness, too - this cowering embarrassed and ashamed.  

But it's the light that heals, I try to encourage my friend, and God's love covers a multitude of sins. It's freedom to admit we are broken. We are all broken - at different times in different places - but instead of confessing our sins and sharing our woundedness and asking those who love us to help us heal, we walk around trying to hold all the pieces together, leaving chips and shards of wounds in our wake. 

I tell her this, because hurt people hurt people, and it always come back to this...

Those who look to {the LORD} are radiant,
and their faces shall never be ashamed. Psalm 34:4-7 ESV

We are radiant - not because we are light, but because we are in the Light and the Light of Christ is in us and - exposing our sins, healing our wounds, reflecting off our unashamed faces and pouring into and through our brokenness and onto the lives of those around us.      

{I intended for this to post yesterday morning, but for whatever reason, I failed to schedule it. As our nation mourns unspeakable evil, may the Body of Christ be light where ever the LORD takes us in the days to come. Come, Lord Jesus. Come quickly.}

I {LOVE} Sunday::to wait in silence and to trust...

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my salvation and my glory;
my mighty rock, my refuge is God.
Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your heart before him;
God is a refuge for us. Selah
Psalm 62:5-8 ESV
For those times when there are no words.