God has been so close to me, so present these last weeks.
If you’ve read my last posts, you’ll have seen that I’m having a really hard time with my family. And God is here, so close, so near to me, with such love and kindness and compassion.
God has shown herself present and active in all kinds of ways, whether it be through the kindness and support of my friends, or through helping me to find some kind of balance between what is going on in my family and everything else in my life – God does not permit me to drown in fear and pain and sadness, but she is showing me beauty and love and hope all around me.
While things are breaking in my family, crocuses and snowdrops break through the ground around me, the light changes and I hear birds singing in the morning, announcing new life and new joy and new beginnings.
While I am faced with the uglier sides of family members, I am painting and drawing and creating more than I have in months. I find sanity in the process, help to work through everything I am feeling, and beauty and joy in what I am creating.
While trying to address problems in my life that, as it turns out, I alone cannot solve, I also noticed someone huddled in a doorstep last night, on a cold and rainy day, wondering if they’re okay, asking them and not getting a response – and a second later, someone else had stopped too, and she seemed to know what she was doing, and we both helped the man to get up, and called an ambulance for him, and it turned out that the person who stopped actually deals with this kind of thing professionally…
God is here. If I engage, God engages. If I search for new life, God creates it and points me to it. If I dare to follow God’s call, God holds me up all the way.
I’m not alone.
God is here. God is here. God is here.
Those who go through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs
from Psalm 84:5
Even in chaos you will bear me up;
if the waters go over my head,
you will still be holding me up.
For the chaos is yours also,
and in the swirling of mighty waters
is your presence known.
Janet Morley
(from I will praise God, my Beloved, in: “All Desires Known”)
