In His hands

Lord, help me to trust in You.
In the prayer that was given for me just two weekends ago,
My new friend held me tight.
She offered a prayer so deeply moving I could literally feel You moving in the rain.
She spoke of the image of a hand, Your hand, holding me.
She told me that however many times I tried to jump from Your hand, run from it, deny Your name, whatever else a human could do,
You would still be there.
STILL BE THERE!
Her timing was perfect, and so was Yours.

10,000 times I've run,
100,000 more I will again.
And each time, You come at me with the same amount of forgiveness and mercy.
Grace, healing, acceptance, LOVE.
This is too great for me to fathom!
Help me to afford this to others as You have done for me.
Help me to let go of the past and give new life each time, as you have done for me.

Forgive, trust, hope, love,
Grace unending.
And unending, and unending, and unending.
Forever.
10,000 times.

In spite of all you still don't understand

I still forgive.
Still, still, still.
I still afford you trust and love and kindness.
And grace and mercy and everything I have.
I want you to see me grow!

Lord God, please give me strength. More strength than I've ever asked for before.
Matched only by what I asked for in 2005.
For five and a half years I asked for strength, for hope, for forgiveness and peace.
When it finally came, it set me free.
How wonderful that day was!
I cried out with joy; my heart was made new.
So why now, Lord, must I sit here crying out with all I have?
If you told me you would burst forth & reveal so strongly that it would 'rattle [another's] bones, why do I hurt worse than ever before?

Like an amputation.
A great loss.
Oddly, painfully, hauntingly familiar.
"Welcome to February 17th, 2005- The Sequel!"
Or so it feels.
The sequel is every bit as horrible as the original.
I want to destroy this movie.

I trust You, I trust You...

It's unsettling

When you discover what you thought about someone isn't exactly true.
You forgive, forgive, accept their explanation of "I'm just not that way". And that satisfies you.

Then you find out the truth:
That's not how I am [towards you].
Defensiveness, excuses.
Things you do to help and go above and beyond the call of duty get thrown back in your face.
You feel like you're the only one admitting to your flaws as you watch them dance around theirs.
It's not the people in their life, its that they treat those people with more respect and love and genuineness than they do you.
It's heartbreaking.
But all they have to offer is defensiveness, excuses.

You forgive, you forgive, you realize people aren't always congruent with what they say they are. Part of being human. But when it gets to the point where not possessing the qualities they claim happens more often than not, you see people for who they really are.

Grief.
Grief.
But perhaps, then, you grieve for someone that never really existed in the first place.

Yep.