Rainbows and promises

 

Grief is a fire. Simmering quietly. Then it sets off. Uncontrollable. Unstoppable. Consuming everything. You try to put it out. You burn your hands. Welts and blisters. You have to stop the fire. Then you are standing in the middle of an inferno. You can’t go forward, backwards, or sideways. You are in the middle of a house on fire. Everything is on fire. Things start to collapse and fall. Then something falls from the ceiling pinning you to the ground. The pain is all consuming but you welcome the death. At least it will be over. Then all of the sudden you are standing in a giant pile of ash. Everything is gone. Just one giant pile of ash. Your body is still on fire. But it is inside now. Invisible scars. Everyone comes for the fire. But not the ash.

 

 

I wrote that the day after. I am a person who just has to get my feelings down on paper.

 

Time crawls by. I knew I had to go to church on Sunday. I had to. Church is where there is life. Church is where I can hear and be reminded of things buried deep in my soul. Church is the place my soul can breathe. I went and sat in the front row. I praised the Lord and lifted my hands. God is good. This I know. Before the service began, a woman came up to me and said she had a word for me. She said “The Lord will turn your ashes into beauty.”

 

Isaiah 61:3  “and provide for those who grieve in Zion, - to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.”   

 

I cried and cried. I do not ever believe in coincidence. Our family likes to call to these little signs God winks. Just God and our loved ones saying hello, sending strength, letting us know we are not alone. God does these things you can’t explain. I didn’t share that writing with anyone. It was just me getting out what I felt. That woman had no idea. But God did. God was sitting next to me. Holding me. Watching me write. Then he placed the word in this sweet woman’s heart who was willing to walk up to a grieving woman and speak truth to me.

 

There have been so many signs. Things there is no other way it could have happened other than God.  Hopefully someday Patty can share the amazing things that has been revealed.

 

Thank you all. The love and support has been felt and held us up in times when we thought we couldn’t stand. We know God has never left us. Not for a second. He mourns with us. This is not our home. This world is not our domain. We are aliens and foreigners here. We are members of the kingdom of heaven and are ambassadors to share about our world, our faith.

 

1 Corinthians 2: 6-10. 6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,
    what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”[b]—
    the things God has prepared for those who love him—

10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.