Friday's Faith
In Traumas, He Makes Me to Lie Down…
Tommy and I have been plagued with nightmares this week. Mine started last Friday night and Saturday morning just before Father's Day, so I was in a "real good" place to be supportive of Tommy on the always-difficult holiday, as you might imagine. The first nightmare put me particularly under and its haunting nature still remains with me, and the second nightmare just picked up where the first one left off. As they always say, "When it rains, it pours…." So then, we proceeded from there to have a particularly difficult weekend...
Ever since, sleep has not come easy for me. And during the day, coping hasn't been going so well either. The questions raised in my nightmares about Merry Katherine's situation before she was killed were opened up again, and some of them haunted me. I found that I was so traumatized that I became greatly agitated, so that any other thing, little or big, greatly got under my skin and made me miserable. What is it? Does Trauma breed Trauma? It was like I went from one difficult thing to another, and then was accosted by events that really hurt me by the very people who I otherwise had thought were extremely "safe" in my life. It was a horrible time, and I couldn't seem to shake the hurts, nor my baby's situation plaguing me...
Tommy was very sweet and tried to reach out to me as best he could. And he was very helpful. Sometimes I get so incredibly tense that there is no way I could ever get back to sleep at night without one of his gentle back rubs, and several times, he would help me get back to sleep. But we were both struggling, and sometimes that backfires, and we even find ourselves struggling "against" one another. We're doing okay now, but it wasn't easy getting to this place.
After one particularly difficult night of sleep, and facing a day with some challenging situations ahead with some of my clients, I lay there in bed after Tommy had gotten up, and just cried out to my God to please help me. There were so many toxins I just couldn't seem to let go of, and I knew my mind needed to be clear, at least for the sake of my clients. God came to me and was so incredibly tender…
It was like His Holy Spirit took over and took me on a gentle path of Spirit-guided imagery onto God's Living Waters...
I envisioned and imagined floating in the very clear, warm, and comforting waters of His River of Life, and as I floated along, with God by my side, I felt my tensions melting away. But then a memory of some of the weekend's miseries would infiltrate its way into my head all at once and would immediately throw me back into my turmoil.
Time after time these violations would ply their way into my mind and heart.
At each of those times, God gently spoke to me and said,
"Let it go; just let it float off of you."
No sooner would He say that than I would see the incident almost as a rectangular weight lodging upon me that would begin to lose its weightiness, become light enough to float, and then simply slither off of me and float away, tormenting me no more. It continued until several of the torments were lifted from me in a similar way, as I let them go and watched them slither off of me and just float away.
What a soothing, comforting experience. It was literally a playing out of Psalm 23 that I often meditate to as I do my deep breathing to try to go to sleep, for He, my Shepherd, was "leading me beside the still waters," helping me to "lie down in green pastures," yet here, they were His living waters; He was even leading me down the path of righteousness as He led me one by one to lay my grievances down and let them go, so that time after time,
He was effectually restoring my soul.
It was God's transformative grace at work.
It was a beautiful meditation that He inspired and then entered into, bringing me healing manifestations that I could never have accomplished on my own. By the time I saw my clients, I was fine and was able to attend to their very pressing needs.
What a tender, empathic Savior we serve. His gentle grace overcame the raucous battle that I had allowed into my heart and soul, and He did it all so lovingly, no judgments against me, just gentleness.
I even cried out in the middle of it regarding what my child may have gone through before she was killed,
and He gently reminded me,
"But it got her to where she needed to be,"
which I knew was true.
Her heart indeed was made ready to see her God, and she had responded to Him just two days before she ultimately was to go and be with Him. The particular manifestations of our suffering don't really matter once we enter into the Savior's arms where He turns our mourning into joy, and so despite this angst, I settled down and knew she was okay ~ He was taking care of her just as He was taking care of me. And so even that pain and agony melted away and released from me.
Our loving Savior enters into our pain, bringing His presence and His comfort, ever nurturing our broken hearts, both mine here on earth, and my precious child's, up in Heaven. Anything else on this earth pales in comparison!
Picture of Living Waters, thanks to
photobucket.com :
photo 2013-08-15204057.jpg
Graphic 2, thanks to
Nativity Pageant of Knoxville
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