Holy Places

As we sat around with other couples who are working through their recovery in their marriages and fighting for strength and purity and redemption, I am reminded of these groups I have been in for nearly over two years. Celebrate Recovery, AA, and now this group. Broken people, admitting they are broken, can't do it alone and through the sharing and listening and exposing one's own sin are seeing redemption first hand....a Holy Place to be. We struggled through sharing our week, a hard week at that. A move to a new house and the stress that goes along with it, opened the wounds and felt like salt poured in. We are not THERE again, but it was a reminder of the fragility of our marriage and how easy it is to drown in one's own self-pity and stress. We left still very broken, but encouraged and a little more strength to hold on.

In putting one of my little ones to bed tonight I was sharing with her a reminder of Satan's lies. Due to the tornado trauma she experienced first hand on TV in our state, I fear she will never be the same. Fear creeps in her eyes when the thunder rolls and lightening lights up the sky. She is thrown immediately back into the day she saw magnificent tornado's rip through towns and heard the weatherman say "people are being killed right now." I wish I had that to do over again and had them in a different room. But the damage has been done, and all I can do now is acknowledge her fear and speak truth to her. The truth being... Satan is whispering to her saying the same thing he says to me "God is not good. He let people die. Be afraid when storms come. It will end the same." In sharing about my own "tornado's" of life and how, just like she, Satan tries to lure me in to fear and in turn I have to fight to hear the truth. To hear God's whisper, "that He loves me, He cares for me and He knows how extremely afraid I am. That He is good." I have to make that choice to believe Him, to turn to Him, to look heavenward, not at the clouds billowing in heading my way... and then, and only then, can I have peace like a river. Not sure if it all sunk in, but it was a sweet dear moment of sharing our hearts and our fears and that our one true Father knows, and cares and loves deeply and we don't have to stay stuck in the lure of Satan....And that was a Holy moment as well.

I am so thankful for recovery and the road I have walked. I pray my children know a Jesus who speaks to them and holds them through the storm. I pray that he takes them by the paths of righteousness and peace, and they may experience first hand His love and mercy and life in their very souls. That they know Him personally and deeply and that He isn't a rule book to keep nor an emotional high. I can not give this to them. I can not assume they will turn out great, moral, out standing citizens, but I can assure you I pray for a deep rooted faith that when nature's storms come and life storms arise and they walk their own valley's they know exactly Who and What they are turning To. Not their parents faith, their Sunday School faith, but a real God who cares in a real way for each of their needs, and out of this they desire nothing more than to follow Him and all He says. May God redeem our family in all the "tornado's" big and small in life and may we never, ever cease to keep making the choice to turn to Him.