I am soaking up the goodness of God.
I mean I am lapping it up like a puppy that has been playing all afternoon with kids in the yard and just found a bowl of water.
I might have stood up in the middle of a restaurant last night, at the end of telling a story from this week, and fist bumped both arms in the air praising God. {The kids might have asked me to sit down and stop embarrassing myself...them. LOL}
I am grateful.
I am a grateful girl.
The last nearly five years have been HARD. If I have alluded any differently, forgive me. I misled.
I have often wondered why writing...why me....why this journey, but then you meet people who say I read your writing and go, "Me too." When that happens, I know I have this dumb, useless look on my face because I am blown away that the vomiting I do on a keyboard resonates with...well anyone.
This journey feels so personal, so private, so....well, insane...that I hardly know how to respond when others bear hug me excited to embrace their compadre from the trenches. {...and I am not going to lie...that is awesome.}
We are not alone.
So...I write to remember. I write to learn. I write to process this journey from despair to healing and the lessons along the way.
I love basketball though I was never as good a player as I wanted to be. I also had some hard coaches, tough and smart. One thing you learn in basketball is how to pivot. It is fast and quick, and done well, effective.
I digress.
I am in the middle of a five plus year pivot.
I am turning the titanic.
I had built and lived a life that one day I decided to lay down, but only after I fell down...on my knees, and then on my face. A failure. Not by the world's standards, but by my own. The standards I had designed in my imaginary world believing that if I did every single one of them right, everything would one day be okay.
That was January 2012.
I sit here in September 2016 still working to unwind the imaginary life I had built up for that 40 years.
The pivot is my wilderness.
Sometimes it takes a long time to pivot.
...and that is okay.
Sometimes your heart gets broken by circumstance and decisions you felt compelled to make...and two years later someone taps you on the shoulder and when you pivot around to see who it is, they grab you in a bear hug, with tears in their eyes, and say, "I am so glad you are back." and it is EVERYTHING. Simply everything.
Healing.
I am so grateful.
I will restore what the locusts have eaten....
I need to go find that verse.
The Lord’s Answer
Then the Lord was jealous for his land
and took pity on his people.
The Lord replied to them:
“I am sending you grain, new wine and olive oil,
enough to satisfy you fully;
never again will I make you
an object of scorn to the nations.
“I will drive the northern horde far from you,
pushing it into a parched and barren land;
its eastern ranks will drown in the Dead Sea
and its western ranks in the Mediterranean Sea.
And its stench will go up;
its smell will rise.”
Surely he has done great things!
Do not be afraid, land of Judah;
be glad and rejoice.
Surely the Lord has done great things!
Do not be afraid, you wild animals,
for the pastures in the wilderness are becoming green.
The trees are bearing their fruit;
the fig tree and the vine yield their riches.
Be glad, people of Zion,
rejoice in the Lord your God,
for he has given you the autumn rains
because he is faithful.
He sends you abundant showers,
both autumn and spring rains, as before.
The threshing floors will be filled with grain;
the vats will overflow with new wine and oil.
“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—
the great locust and the young locust,
the other locusts and the locust swarm —
my great army that I sent among you.
You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
and you will praise the name of the Lord your God,
who has worked wonders for you;
never again will my people be shamed.
Then you will know that I am in Israel,
that I am the Lord your God,
and that there is no other;
never again will my people be shamed.
Wow. I had to include that entire section of Joel 2 because if you have been, are in, are headed into a wilderness season....you need the promise and the gift of these words that God will restore you. That he will restore your heart, your spirit, your mind....and on and on. He is a God of RESTORATION.
....but...BUT you have to let him do the work IN you and you have to embrace the journey...setting out on it not knowing where he will take you, how long you will be there, but trusting in a God that loves you, is for you, and knows you better than you know yourself (especially when you are at the foot of the wilderness).
God loves you.
YOU.
So....I am grateful.
Every day as of late feels like a battle. The toughest battles yet. {I know. Insert eye roll here.}
Every single day though...God is giving me a victory, sometimes tiny, and they are EVERYTHING to my weary heart.
...and I am REJOICING. In a ballroom, on Main Street, in a restaurant, on a soccer field, driving down the road screaming in giddy excitement with a friend...I have no shame. I. Will. Rejoice. I need the rejoicing because the battles are HARD.
So today lock arms with a compadre and say, "Me too." and then jump up and down at even the tiniest of victories and celebrate it.
...but here is one more thing....when you see someone who went buck naked out into the arena and laid it all down and got beaten to a pulp but got up and kept walking, kept fighting the good fight....tap them on the shoulder and when they pivot, hug them and tell them, "I am so glad you are back." because your words love and embrace, God uses to heal.
Sunshine Dreams to You ~ Today and Every Day! :)