My request for a stone.

My life has been very black and white lately. My days are filled with decision: Do I trust the Lord or am I out? I don’t usually walk in such a vividly decisive place; there’s usually some gray area where you can sit on it for a moment and work out your decision to trust. That is not where I am right now. Right now my decisions are necessary and immediate, and the choices dire to my daily experience of life.

I am in a battle; it has been long, and I am tired, and I know that it is almost over, and I just want to finish strong.

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I approached the Lord on December 1, 2014 to ask Him to heal my body. It took enormous amounts of faith for me to believe that He would desire to heal me; but I came, and I devoted 30 days to seek the Lord for healing.

 And it wasn’t until He said, “Yes,” on December 15 and gave me a promise that i realized this:

With all the faith I could muster up, I had only enough to ask for a stone. But God, my thorough and steadfastly loving God accepted my tiny mustard seed of faith and offered me a diamond instead.

My stone was a healed body.
His diamond was a healed body, a healed spirit and a healed mind; all the damage done to me by my health problems--the deep emotional wounds, the shallow physical wounds and everything in between.
I asked for a patch and He desired wholeness.

If I would let Him give me what His extravagant love for me desired for me, He would give it. “Believe.” He said.

And it has required immense pain; the wounds were deep and to venture to the bottom of them to ensure true healing has required immense weakness requiring immense trust in my Healer. Hebrews 12 speaks of a deep shaking so that only what cannot be shaken remains.

This year has been a strange mix of glorious revelation of the love of the Father, strenuous cruelty of the enemy, and grueling pain of confronting self.

This year has been filled with prayer, pain and praise. The kindness and love of Jesus has wrapped around me, holding me together as the Spirit has worked within and the Father has worked without.

This year has been filled with the steady hands of the skilled great Physician, carefully revealing the mess, the lies, the wounds, the weaknesses and declaring His Truth over them until they are uprooted and covered with the healing balm of Jesus.

And this month, November 2015, I have devoted to praising the Lord. After 15 years and 15 days in bondage and 319 days in the wilderness, I am taking my final lap around my Jericho. I WILL enter into the promise I have been given, because my God is faithful to His word. This month is a month of revelation, where I get to look back over the last year and see the work of the Lord on my behalf, thus solidifying the work He has been doing. 30 days of praising Him for this steadfast love and His faithfulness...not just because I get a diamond, but because He is worthy of praise.

ALL the paths

“All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep His covenant and His testimonies.” Psalm 25:10

As I read through Psalm 25 this week, I was so struck by this verse because of the use of the word “all.” I love this verse.

ALL the paths of the Lord.

At the moment, my path is rocky; jagged, feet-splitting stones cause me hobble along, and sometimes I wonder if I have what it takes to make it to the place where the ground smooths out or if the wounds on my feet even have the potential to heal. So when I read the word, “All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness...” I wonder and I consider and I marvel.

I consider the ways His steadfast love and faithfulness meet me as I walk here; how mysterious it is that the more rugged the path, the more wondrous the love seen; how incredible it is that no matter how low I seem to stoop, the Lord bends even lower so as to lift me up; how merciful it is that the inability to be separated from His love becomes proven as He gently does not let go of me in my misery.

ALL the paths of the Lord.

I marvel that even now, in this moment, my path is solid; it is as solid in the waters of affliction as it is in green pastures of peace. It is solid not because my environment is stable or my circumstances blessed, but because the Lord Himself is steadfast and faithful, and I am His.