Good evening friends, I pray your day has been a great one and that now you are settled in, ready for some quiet time before a new and busy week begins...
In prayer this evening I calmed my mind and sat in silence allowing the still quiet voice of God to speak to me. I thanked him for this day, I thanked him for each of you in my life and for all of the times that I have been down to what we thought was the bottom of the barrel, for all the times when I feel that there is no way out, that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, for all the times that I felt so alone and then boom, through prayer and faith....you were there God, You took the oppression, You took the door and opened it for me, You were the lighthouse that lead me to shore, You were my company. Thank You, thank You, thank You for never letting me out of Your grasp. So many come for prayer in need, so many are feeling that sense of loss, of being alone, of fear..allow them this very moment to feel Your love, to feel Your safety, to feel Your security and to know that they are not and never will be alone as long as they hold fast to their faith and they believe, bless them with answers to their questions and lead them in the direction that will take them to the next step of your plan for them. Father bless each of us with peace, calm, comfort and love in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen
The Cliff
The toes of my battered shoes hang over the edge of the cliff.
Below, I see not what lies there in reality, only what I want to see. Peace. Solitude. No more pain. A life free of heartbreak and disappointments. A tranquil place, conjured up from the depths of my sorrowed mind. A place where only I know exists. A place where I can go on the wings of the night to escape my despair. Forever.
I don’t know how, or why, I survived last summer. I really didn’t want to, I really didn’t care. The Lord deemed it appropriate to take from me my pony and three dogs, in only a few months, without ever giving me a chance to discuss it with him. I didn’t get to negotiate; I didn’t get to beg for more time.
I have cried nearly every day for over a year. Instead of focusing on the love they gave me, and the good times we had, I could only focus on that last day. A video of their final moments played in repeated loops, over and over in my mind, until I found myself in the deepest pit of misery known to mankind. I reached the point where honestly, I didn’t care if I woke or not the next morning, if my dogs and pony were not there to greet me.
But then I thought, as I teetered on the edge of that cliff, wondering if I’d fall on the Heaven side, or on the Hell side, I am not the only one. I am not the only person who feels this sort of pain. I am but one of many.
Every human being that walks this great earth will know sorrow, they will meet misery. Sooner or later, despair will come knocking. It’s an unfortunate path we all must walk. The fact that we can love someone or something so much, is essentially the downside of being human. Love is our gift from God, and our cross to bear.
Who am I to contemplate leaping from a cliff to escape my private turmoil? What would my actions do to my family, my friends? Who would be the one to call my mom and dad and say “We’re sorry, your daughter just leapt from that cliff over yonder.”
Out of fear of what might lay at the bottom of that chasm, I was forced to turn my despair into hope. A gust of wind suddenly blew me back from the cliff‘s edge. It breathed into me a new purpose. Instead of taking that final leap, I wrote.
Day and night, nearly twenty four hours a day, I penned story after story. I knew the moment I stood up and my gaze fell on the empty dog beds, reality would come crashing down on me, and new tears would flow. I dared not stop.
I suddenly had a mission. Instead of focusing on my despair, I would instead focus on others in my position. If one person can step back from the cliff like I did, then my mission would be fulfilled.
The Lord took my pets for a reason last summer. I’m still not happy about it, I will never be. But it was his way of telling me he had another purpose for me to fulfill, something other than spending my days alone and secluded with my family of animals. It was his way of bringing me out of my shell from the world, which I had unknowingly built around myself.
It was He who guided my hand, urging me to reach out to others teetering on that cliff, and somehow, someway, send them a message that they too can back away from it. It was a trade-off. My pets in exchange for giving someone like you a reason to carry on.
Be patient, great things will once again loom in your horizon. If you find yourself gazing down into that deep abyss as I did, contemplating your purpose of life-wait for that gust of wind to once again breathe hope back into your wounded spirit.
I promise you, it will come.
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