I just finished painting my fireplace mantle. Seriously. It's painted, new tile, and grout....finished. I thought I'd never see the day. This is the room I ripped apart the week I moved into my crazy project house just over 4 years ago....4 years 3 months to be exact. I remember the very 1st week, using my dads electric chisel to rip out the fireplace. Working through the thick mortar I removed stone by stone, the sorely outdated grey face. The cos tic dust filled the whole house, quickly choking out the clean air, but no one could make me put that thing down. The rocks cluttered the floor and spilled out onto the deck and even into the backyard but still I pushed on. I remember the feel of the tool as it vibrated my hands to the point of numbness. I remember feeling cloudy and my mind slow and heavy, but I dared not stop. I remember thinking that if I did stop.....there would be emptiness...and silence. Neither of these was I prepared to deal with.
That week marked the beginning of the end of the woman I was. From there everything changed. I remember waking up day after day and thinking maybe, just maybe...it had all been a sick dream. That the last week had not happened. Soon that week became weeks...and then a month, and then months. The hollow feeling in my chest, that hole I felt carved in my soul slowly swallowed me. The initial shock eventually gave way to comfortlessness....the comfortlessness gave way to emptiness...the emptiness...gave way to the complete and utter lack of hope....
This is my dark place. I'll be honest, it is a place my heart frequents. The shadows are deep, and my times here have been long. I would like to say that I will never go back, that I'll shake the dust off my heart and never return....but in my experience a raunchy ugly, god awful long, scary dark valley always, always, always precedes the summit.
We've all heard the cliche saying, "Time heals all wounds." *pats hand* Well, I strongly and wholeheartedly disagree. Some wounds are simply not designed to be healed. Some things will always hurt. We get used to the pain and life continues to fly on around us, but our hearts and our lives are forever affected. Someone once tried to tell me, "Life moves on...."......that's all I remember because I can smell a pat answer a mile away, and promptly blacked out to prevent myself from beating her face in with the love of Jesus.
That's just plain naivete. The truth is life "moved on" for everybody else but for me life "changed forever". *I* was changed forever. Ultimately the for sure things, the guarantees of my life had failed me completely. In four and a half years I went from being a mother and a wife......to being single and alone. I loved Jesus. I made hard choices. I served. I prayed. I read.....and so much had been allowed to rip through my world.
It's easy for me in that position to take a gander to my left and then to the right. What better way to see what went wrong than comparing your life to everyone else's....annnnd while I was shamelessly gandering about I happened to notice people that have it by comparison, so bloody good. Stuff handed to them. Blessings and wonderment and joy and blah...blah....blah......and as the anger(vomit) rose from the indignation I felt while gazing at their lives of "quiet and ease"......that still small voice whispered, reminding me of a basic fact that I had forgotten or disregarded a long time ago......My Son is your only guarantee...and in Him and Him ONLY comes your hope and your help.
For the 1st time in a very long time everything slips into perspective. I can look back at the last four years and see it as I haven't been able to. God permitted a lot of extremely difficult things into my life and he allowed someone else's sin to do exactly what my sin does.....destroy. But more than all these things He and ONLY He picked me up....all two thousand or so bloody chunks of me and carried me through the darkest days of my life. Somewhere along the way he put me back together, set me on my feet and taught me how to walk again, all while piecing my heart back together........when I layed down and refused to get up, He waited patiently for me. When I threw myself to the ground and refused to continue, He loved me right where I was. When I was tired and couldn't lift my head anymore, He held it up. When I repeatedly tried to settle, He showed me time and time again, my true value. When I cried, He listened. When I doubted, He proved me wrong. When I was unfaithful and unloving.......He loved me still.
He in His infinite wisdom has allowed very hard things that I will carry and struggle with until the day I die.....but He in His overwhelming compassion has never failed in carrying and leading me through them. I have a guarantee. I have hope. I have help. And in these....I lack nothing.
