THE LIGHT

***Thank you to those who have written me notes over the last few months. Most of you I have never met face to face. But God knows you and He used you to speak hope and encouragement into my life. Please forgive the unanswered e-mails and personal thank-yous. They will come.***

***This post was accidentally published before it was ready. A writer's nightmare. I took a deep breath and edited it. Grace please if it got to you before it was complete. Bless you***

Sometimes life comes along and knocks the pen right out of your hand.

Sometimes life comes along and knocks the pen out of your hand and stomps on it and crushes it into the ground.

That's when the writing stops but not the stories.

God seems to write the best stories when He is shining into your darkness.

There's been darkness in my life during the last six months. A darkness that consists of losing two people who have loved me every day of my life. It's been made up of having the word "hospice" in the same sentence with my mother's name. It's been made up of an unspeakable hurt. Of saying good-bye to our thirteen year old puppy who stopped our tears with her antics over the last eight years and when she couldn't stop them, she licked them right off our faces. The darkness has also included saying goodbye to friends that when we were too weak to walk to Jesus, they helped to carry us to Him.

The darkness makes one weary and overwhelmed.

But the darkness also makes it easier to hear the One calling out to us in the middle of it.

"Come."

"Come to me."

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28

"The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy. What does it feel like to be weary? You have trouble concentrating. The problems of the day are like claws in your brain. You feel pummeled by life. What does heavy-laden feel like? Same thing. You have so many problems you don't even now where to start. You can't do life on your own anymore. Jesus wants you to come to him that way! Your weariness drives you to him." Paul Miller, from The Praying Life

I've been weary and I've been overwhelmed.

I've known what it's like to feel those claws in my brain, to not know where to start.

I've known messiness and a mind that won't stop wandering.

But I've also been blinded by His light shining in the darkness.

God assured me that this season of darkness would end.

And I believe it has.

As I look back I can now see when it did.

The season ended when I realized that the darkness wasn't to be feared. That it wasn't ugly or a season to dread. It ended when I could see that the purpose of the darkness is to only make the Light brighter and His beauty more easily seen.

There never was the possibility that the darkness could hide the Light.

What could hide its own Creator?

The pictures above were taken over a thirty minute time span.

How fast the Light overpowers the darkness.