i had a longing last night.. something i couldn't quite define, but then it wasn't fulfilled and i couldn't sleep. i decided to get up to read and i could feel the separation in a relationship that we are told is to always be fulfilling and always perfect, but b/c of our nature, is often less so. it's not that there isn't love or happiness or truth b/c there are all those things. they just get clouded sometimes b/c of deadlines or long days, or circumstances we can't control.

so as i was reading i came across this:

It's interesting how you sometimes have to leave home before you can ask difficult questions, how the questions never come up in the room you grow up in, in the town in which you were born. It's funny how you can't ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and set things in a new way before you realize nothing happening to you is normal.

--From through Painted Deserts


i thought about my past. been thinking a lot about it recently as i read through The sacred Romance once again. i think about the hurts that have shaped my human perspective and have guided the script that i live by. i think about kim coming up to visit and how she told me that none of them thought i would believe in God after everything went down. they had all expected anger and withdrawal, and my response was the complete opposite. the thing is, everyone that surrounds me now has known me since the tragedy, not before. kim represented my friends who have known me always. and their expectation was so far removed from my reaction.

what changed?

i've taken a spiritual gifts inventory twice and the gift of faith always gets the highest score. could this be the reason that i didn't waver? the fact that i continued to believe that God remained present in my life during the journey through the valley?

this is evidence to me that i encountered God. i was saved years before this, but God revealed himself again in a moment when i could have chosen to go the opposite way. he revealed Himself in such a gentle way. i could so tangibly feel all of the pain and the loss, but was aware that something greater than myself or the situation was guiding me along the path toward healing. i knew that there was redemption however distant along the path it seemed.

it took tragedy for me to step back from the present life i was living to ask the difficult questions, to seek out the answers and to come to a place of peace.

it is in those moments of longing when i can see how far i've come; where i can step back and view the canvas of so vast a landscape. when that indefinable presence is that of God--coming again in such a gentle way to reveal to me new truths, new lessons, new life.

posted by Kelly @ 9:18:00 AM