NorCal CI

(The following is a post on this Christian blogging community I frequent, Revelife.com.  Based on some of the posts I’ve seen from y’all lately, this seems rather appropriate.  You don’t have to walk on ice - not snow, but ICE - to know that feeling: Slipping.  Anyway, read on and I hope this helps.  Our first CI Staff meeting is going down tomorrow so I should probably hit the sack.  Peace&blessings.  -  [Kuya] Ron) 

By Amy at makemeamary.com

I thought things were going pretty well. And now here I am praying  Lord, just help me hold it together.

Even so, today is better than yesterday.

Yesterday I was a mess. I don’t know how it happens that way. I don’t know why a fading scar that’s all but invisible could out of no where just open right back up, and then again you’re bleeding all over the place and the hurt’s as fresh as the day the wound was brand new.

I believe that shock in times of tragedy is a divine protection. And I believe He lifts the veil slowly, ever so slowly, allowing us to grasp our new reality in gradual ways.  

But yesterday I feel like the veil vanished altogether. And when it did, I looked around and saw the ugly truth in fresh new ways and it terrified me.

I could’ve gone to death row. It’s only by the grace of God that I didn’t. How in the world didn’t I realize this before now, almost three years later? No wonder it makes my mom sick to talk about it still.

It’s the deepest kind of hurt. How could someone who “loved” me subject me to this? And yet I know that we do not war with mere flesh and blood. There’s a greater force at work, a ruthless enemy who hates with a passion too vicious for words. A wicked one who heaps guilt on the innocent and seeks to cripple the effective and who loves a fatherless child.

So that’s the ugly truth, and it cuts deep even still.

But there’s also that beautiful Truth, and it’s much, much bigger than the ugly reality of this fallen world. It’s the Truth I know and love and hold dear and cling to, the Truth that rescues us from the depths and redeems lives destroyed. It’s that healing Balm in Gilead,

and by His stripes we are healed.

And so I claim it, today and every day.