Setting it All Down

"To the woman 

who carries the hurt

of everyone else around her,

I pray you find a place

to set it all down."

--Ashley O.

She knows me so well.  My daughter has watched and listened to me for long enough to know about the weight I carry for others.  A couple of nights ago she sent me the above words.

The past weeks have been heavy...overwhelming and grueling at times but Sunday morning in the sacred space where God and I sat, I knew I had come up against a wall.  I felt empty and inconsolable...exhausted in deep ways. The pain and heartbreak of some that I love has been nonstop for too long now.  It all feels like too much, too awful much to carry.

So I am paying attention...because I need to.  A cancellation this morning has given me the opportunity for me to sequester myself in a silent retreat for several days next week.  This comes to me as a grace of God.  It both scares me and frees me if I'm honest.  No phone, electronics, no relational connections with those I love.  Hours upon hours of no ministry output; only the input of the Trinity to speak and me to listen. My spirit craves this and fears it.  Still I will go to this place where I can set it all down.

And when I return, the ongoing guidance of some wise and gifted people will enable me to learn more holistic ways of caring for the many I love.  It will be a journey. I did not arrive here overnight.  Step by step I will invite the Trinity into the empty, tired, broken places of me and walk His new path...the one I catch a glimmer of just over the horizon.

Mother's Day 2019

 

"Because of God's sovereign plan I was loved by a Mom who gave my life a nurturing foundation and her laugh 🙂and since then by a stepmom who has sacrificially given in large ways.  Both are impressioned in my heart."

A Beacon of Hope

My Spiritual Director says that "life is about getting blindsided alot."  She's right.  Sometimes that blindsiding is merely frustrating or disappointing.  But at other times it goes deeper and leaves one fighting to see through the maze that surrounds them.  It's the place I am finding myself in at present.

My dear friend Ruth Anne http://breadandhoneyrab.blogspot.com/ penned words a number of years ago which resonate in new ways for me today.  I love how Jesus meets us in such beautiful and intimate ways and shines a beacon of hope into brokenness.

Broken Praise

I say a song of praise to God my healer,

To Whom all of my broken adoration is due.

To the One who takes my pain upon His shoulders,

And lifts me up to wholeness.

I am weak and needy.

I am the broken one.

This way of being,

     here and now, in a fallen world of sickness and disease and dysfunction,

          leaves me gasping, limping, desperate.

This “lesser than I was created for”,

     “Not in original condition”

          “Damaged goods” way of being

Proffers my tears

     Salts my wounds.

          Offends my soul.

And I would be left there,

Helpless

Were it not for the Healer God who loves me.

Who comes for me.

And stays with me in the darkest days of my pain.

And walks with me in the hardest hours of my therapy.

And talks to me in the loneliest moments of my recovery.

He is my medicine.  He is my rest.  He is my healing.

So I say a song of praise to God my healer

Who hears my broken adoration

And makes me whole again.

--Ruth Anne Breithaupt

August 20, 2006