i sat near the back of the darkened room in the church basement yesterday, coffee in hand and holiday sweets on the paper plate in front of me.
girls had been dropped off at preschool, elias was well taken care of by the many women who swoon over him when i bring him in.
for one hour and fifteen minutes, i could sit down.
drink coffee.
learn.
all without needing to wipe a nose or a bottom or break up an argument.
it was the testimony of the woman who had written our bible study.
part two actually.
and i already knew parts of her story.
i was prepared.
so when the word "suicide" began to be spoken, i was okay.
i. was. okay.
i was okay even when she began to move further into each stage of the finding out.
i was okay.
until.
until she began to talk about the circumstances around it.
i found myself leaving the room and groping for the banister.
all i wanted to do was get upstairs where it was light.
i sat huddled in the entry way and found myself pulled close to a woman who knew why i had run and she sat there in the middle of my grief and my pain and remained close until i could get my bearings and go back down the stairs.
how very much like life.
we find ourselves in the dark, whether by our own doing or someone else's. and something is done or said and all we can do is run...
run towards Light, run to safety, run to where there isn't any more pain.
and we grope about for something, anything stable and we feel as though we are going to vomit and that there is no escaping whatever it is we find ourselves in and the moment we feel most alone we find ourselves wrapped in Arms that don't let us go. that don't walk away. that pursue us until we collapse and allow Him to comfort us.
my sweet sister, becky, sent me words to encourage and lift my eyes up to Jesus and in these words was a gift.
a promise.
and i'm clinging...
to Him.
"For You have delivered me from death, my eyes and tears, and my feet from stumbling and falling. I will walk before the Lord in the Land of the living," Psalm 116:8-9, AMP
