Page One.

Sometimes in the midst of adversity the world loses all color.

You used to walk through the earth seeing through the very eyes of Christ’s soul. The greens are so bright you feel the tickle of the freshly mowed lawn; the pinks and reds of the sunset paint themselves to the back of your eyelids; the blue of the sky as fathomless as staring into a deep sapphire ocean.  Everything is fresh and novel. You can hear the birds varying tones; the waves breaking hard against the hot sand; the spring air stings of flowers and the hot sun promises a clean slate every new day.

  

You never saw the Storm approaching. 

How could you? As you listened to the air around you, lifting your face to be warmed by the sun, your hand tangled in His, sewn to His bleeding side, the wind murmuring through the trees. Without any forewarning, any indication, the once cerulean sky bleeds black and the green of the meadow you are standing in turns a musty gray. Everything is silenced as the warm wind turns to a frigid blast. It rolls through you, melting and refreezing your bones to a deformed mass. All alone now, your hands bleed from where He cut the threads of your soul. You hear the chains of the enslaved clanking in the void as they approach. Sleet falls from the devoid mass that used to be your sky. It cuts you as it hits your pale skin. But you don’t even notice this because the dragon has approached… you feel the hot breath of him on the nape of your neck.  He whispers and licks your neck with wicked lies. You can taste them, they taste of cold hard metal.

                 

“You’ve lost your worth.”

As I sat in Faithwalkers 2009, listening to the pastors utter truth, I could never picture what my next year would look like. I knew I was going to be a leader. I had plans. Dreams. I was ready, willing, eager even. It would happen that afternoon. Amanda would tell the women, obviously there would be tears, even from me. I didn’t really want to leave Amanda alone to fend for herself. 

Looking back, it’s sometimes really hard not to think that the Storm approached because I was made a leader. And now that I’m not….the storm could be enveloped and curl back into the sky and the earth would seep back into color.  But I know that’s just another one of the dragon’s lies. Storms don’t work like that. I know that now. 

Each day of 2010 seemed to bring another round of ice and fire. If it wasn’t my heart episodes, my brother, or my sickness that just developed one day without counsel or sense; it was attack, accusation, slander, lies I believed and followed. I lost all sense of my current surroundings and sunk deep into the “mire and clay.” I didn’t even wanna find my Sun anymore. He had hidden Himself, so why even look. 

There’s an old poem entitled “Footprints,” many Christians have read it through the years and clung to it. It’s a picture of a man walking along a seashore and he is looking back over his walk with Christ. He noticed through all the most prosperous times in his life there were two sets of footprints deeply etched into the wet sand, his and Christ’s. As he reflected closely though, he noticed during the dark times of his life there were only ever one set of footprints. He turns to Christ and accuses him of leaving him in his deepest need. Christ looks at the man tenderly and explains that He would never leave him and the reason there was only one set of footprints is because he carried the man, when the man could no longer walk. 

I wasn’t walking along a quiet seashore though. I couldn’t even see what sort of ground I walked on anymore. It all felt the same. The air smelled dark…tasted dark…looked dark. There was just no justifiable reason for Him to leave me here.  We used to walk through every day together, falling even more in love, learning about the intimate depths of each other’s souls. Then He was just gone. No note of explanation. 

                “Did you find another to love the way you used to love me?”

I want to use this blog to detail my life then and now. Don’t read it if you don’t want to see burning, hard truth.  If you know me now, you see how I have changed, grown, fallen, got back up again, and continue to struggle forward. This is just the beginning…

“A faith that can be destroyed by suffering is not faith. If the heart is cleansed by the love of Jesus Christ, and if the heart loves Him, one can resist all tortures." Tortured For Christ