Birthday Part 2

(This being Birthday Part 2 is a continuation of Birthday Part 1)

Some weeks it has been a daily and even hourly struggle to hold onto truth and keep the thoughts of my mind restrained. I could walk you through many dim valleys and high mountains I have traveled through this summer, but for the sake of time, I will save the journeys for talks over good cups of coffee and skip to the last miles of the road that leads to at least some amount of sense and clarity. There were three beacons that served as truth to get me through. The first a beam of hope my heart held onto, the second a truth that acted as rock to stand on, and the third a gift from Jesus that gave life no human could bring.

The beacon of hope was this. In the middle of the whirlwind of mental and soul distress, somewhere down deep, I knew it would all eventually end, that there would be a calming of the storm. Now I didn’t know how long it would be until it came, but somewhere in me, I had a peace that it would all end in something good. It is impossible to fully know oneself and often impossible to even have a vague outline of what you really are. But in these moments when I felt I knew almost nothing, God allowed me to KNOW that it would end well. I clung to this like a life raft, knowing that a good end could only mean that a good God was leading me through the raging ocean. This hope allowed me to keep walking, keep praying, keep searching scripture, until God showed me the second becon of truth.

The truth came out of my prayers to understand if God had intention in all of this, and if the cause was rooted in spiritual warfare or if I had just opened a new part of my brain that wouldn’t allow me to rest? Ultimately I don’t know the cause, and the answer isn’t of great importance, but the thing I found out was this. That regardless of the cause, God was allowing it to happen for some good purpose in my life and for his glory. I held onto the illustration of traveling through a dark, trap-laden cave being scraped up and bumping my head along the ceiling, but a cave that eventually opened into glory. We would be foolish to believe that God does not ALLOW us to travel through such caves to refine our faith. He does so not out of indifference but out of the very opposite of indifference being love. He loves me enough to lead me through dark places to rip out the dead parts of my soul and replace them with light. This picture gave me direction, that as long as I didn’t sit down in the cave and give up that I would reach its end. As long as I kept crawling along the jagged floor, I would reach the opening into daylight. God was not bringing me along this road by random chance, but with intense purpose and love.

(Still not done! Sorry! I promise the next part will be the last and will have a hope filled ending)