This is an unusual post for me but I feel I have to share this. I feel like there is someone reading this who may feel hopeless or like God isn't listening. I want to assure you that there is hope even when it seems out of your grasp and God is listening and hears every prayer you've whispered to him.
I'm just going to be open and real and share my raw emotions with you. I stepped away from blogging for a season as I just felt like I had lost my inspiration and my joy. I found myself in a place where I didn't wish to stay. I prayed and sought the Lord for answers and felt like there were none to be found for me. Sometimes when we least expect it, the sun breaks behind the silver clouds and the overcast sky is chased away by the intensity of the light.
One of my favorite things to do is get in my car and just drive the backroads with my camera and my music...especially on sunny, warm days with my windows down. This particular day, the sun was out and I felt riding would lift my spirits. I ended up in a very small community on the edge of the Mississippi river called Lenox. As I rounded the corner toward the river's side of the bluffs, I saw a tree that was stripped and bare and like a flood God's presence overtook me with revelation in the form of words in my soul that wouldn't stop. I knew I had to pull over and write them down so I pulled into a church parking lot and began to write. These are the words God gave me:
2-27-09
Like an Oak tree in the dead of winter,stripped down and bare for all to see, revealing what's underneath the layers that so often hide the core. They hide the innermost core of who we are. What makes us who we are? Who are we really? What makes us happy? What do the peeled back layers of our souls reveal? Are we really what onlookers see on the outside?
This season of winter that's gripped my soul and stripped off the layers has revealed to me that I am not always what I appear to be.
I struggle, I fall, I hurt, I cry, I feel. I smile even though I'm not always happy. I smile.
Revelation....maybe not new, but new again to my soul is that it's not in the things of this world that I find my joy, my peace or my future...but it's only in that closeness with my Heavenly Father, the creator of all things, that I truly know who I am, that I feel, that I live, that I am, that I know and that I love.
HE is the smile that you see. He is the joy that I seek. If only for a season I forgot where my happiness came from...it is THAT revelation of HIM that reminds me HE is all I need to "just be." It is God who makes me "me" and I love the me that I am in Him and despise the me I am when I build the walls and hide from the sun(SON).
He is my life force. My very being is from his Grace. I revel today in the revelation that regardless of what I feel or what you see...I am HIS child, made perfect in His love. SPJ
I must have sat in that church parking lot for half an hour with tears flowing. It was as if God was washing away the sadness and heaviness that had settled upon me. I felt hope again. I felt renewed. One week to the day, God answered a huge prayer for my family and sent the right job across my path. Thank you Lord for answered prayer and renewed hope. Don't stop praying....never give in to the despair or hopelessness that tries to settle in your spirit. Keep looking up and know that you are HIS child, made perfect in his LOVE. He has a plan for you and didn't bring you this far to let go of your hand.
I pray blessings over everyone who reads this and finds themselves in a similar place. Just remember, in one single moment God can change everything. (....and then SUDDENLY) Pray for your "suddenly" moment. It will come.
Many blessings,
Sherri
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