Prone to Worry

I am prone to worry.

There, I said it.

As someone who thinks a lot, and I mean A LOT... my mental train can jump it's tracks and be on the treacherous slope of worry in short order if I don't keep my thoughts in check.

Daily.

Sometimes minute by minute... or second by second.

There is someone in my life that I love with every drop of my blood, every beat of my heart, every cell... and that person is so broken. So wounded and struggling.

It's gut wrenching.

If I dwell on that circumstance without including the Lord in the equation I begin to sink into the quicksand of hopelessness.

I found myself sinking just recently.

My praying was more like begging:

"Lord, I'd give up this or that.... or stop this or that.... or do this or that.... if only you'd step in and do something!!"

I was literally on the verge of hysteria in the most silent way possible as we sped down the highway. Thankfully it was dark and our youngest son was asleep in the back seat.

I was biting the inside of my lip to keep from violently weeping.

The sensation was like my own flesh and blood heart being ripped ever so slowly right in two...

Then I heard His reply:

"I did do something. I did it all. I gave it all, my very life, for the one you weep over. I am doing something, right this very moment, trust me. Trust me."

 And the tears came...

I cried the tears of relief that always come when I remember Whose I am... Who is in control...

When the voice of the Lord speaks truth that clears the heavy darkness and lets the fresh air of His love in.

What a gift to me.

So I thanked Him, and prayed a prayer placing this precious one back at His feet.

I read this quote a few days later and it has been on the merry-go-round of my thoughts ever since:

Yeah.

I've been mulling that over for 2 weeks, and I'm sure I'm not done yet.

My thought life is always borne of my beliefs.

Always.

When I first read the quote I asked myself:

"Do I really believe that God won't get it right with this person?"

I didn't like my answers.

Fear is an ugly, mean, strangling task master.

I lived under it's whip for most of my life.

For the past several years I have experienced greater and greater freedom from it's grip.

It's really more like an annoying pest most days.

But when it comes to this person I can almost hear the crack of that whip again.

Do I really believe that God won't get it right with this one?

Really?

NO. I really don't believe that.

I believe that He will win.

That in the end, even if it is long and excruciating, He will be Lord of ALL.

Just as He is now.

There is no one, nothing, outside His vision.

No person beyond His grasp.

No pain greater than His comfort.

And no trespass greater than His sacrifice.

Not one.

I believe that.

All of it.

My own life is proof of it.

My prayer now goes like this:

Lord, I believe that you will get it right with this person that I love. Please help me to trust you more and to obey your promptings. Thank you that your love is greater. Amen

The quote is posted in a very visible place for me to remember what I'm reinforcing when I choose to worry.

So the next time I hear something alarming, have a bad dream, am alone in the quiet with hard memories and nagging regrets....

I will choose to believe He is who He says He is.

I will choose to believe that He will do what He says He will do.

Will you?

Letting go...

I can hear my sister's voice ringing in my ears today...

"I think he's gone..."

She was there in the room with our father when he breathed his last just two weeks ago.

I was packed and ready to leave when I first spoke to her that morning.

She said he was not doing well at all.

When I saw him two months ago he resembled a melted candle version of himself.

So thin, so frail, so ravaged by the disease process that would ultimately end his life.

I was virtually holding my breath all these hundreds of miles away as she left work down in the Portland area and made her way to check in on him.

Her first call on arrival was to tell me to get down there now...

Then, just minutes later, he was in Heaven.

I breathed then.

Sharp painful inhales.

Almost like labor breathing.

Then I walked to our bathroom, closed the door, and howled like a toddler.

It's what always comes when I think of my Dad.

I was so very small when things changed and he was no longer in our home.

My mother says I howled and called for him each night for months after he left.

She would rock me in her lap until I was calm enough to sleep.

I don't remember those times.

But I do remember the feeling.

It's embedded deep into who I am.

This longing for my Dad.

When I was able to stand up and stop the howling after hearing he was gone, I came out of our bathroom and into the presence of my precious husband who was waiting just on the other side of the door.

He comforts me in ways I can't describe.

He bought me 3 old fashioned pink and cream roses that day.

I kept them alive in their tiny vase for 10 days.

Each night as I lay down in my sister's spare room after days of sorting through details, emotions, memories, and Dad's belongings I would look at them standing so tall and beautiful. Enduring their severed state with such grace.

They spoke volumes to me.

They traveled hundreds of miles north and south and north again with me...

And a few days ago, long after the sun went down, I went to a bridge over a river nearby that holds precious memories for my husband with his father and grandfather...

and I let them go.

I said words that I would have loved to have said if I could have been there with him at the end.

I let each petal float down along with those words and land on the slowly moving water below.

I couldn't see through the dark to watch their path, to know if they were caught in the bank, or sucked below by a fish or frog, or continuing on freely to some distant destination to be transformed into something even more beautiful than before.

I trust that they will arrive exactly where they were meant to be.

The deepest part of the ache stopped that night and I have been able to hold onto the precious and the admirable in my memories of Dad.

We turn on his old Joan Baez albums, or bluegrass, or Nat King Cole... and sing, and dance, and let the tears come if they want to.

What a sacred ache.

See you soon Dad...