It feels wonderful to find yourself waiting in quiet hope and encouraging others to do the same. It feels dreadful to seek the God you thought you knew while hope continues to hide. It feels like a betrayal on God’s part, or a failure on yours, or both.
Fifteen years ago, I began a journey of awakening. The end of that journey exposed the beginning of my life. At long last, I saw the hard-to-face realities and easy-to-embrace fantasies in my childhood that led to everything else.
God identifies himself as Defender of the forsaken - especially women forsaken in any number of ways by their husbands, children forsaken in any number of ways by their parents, and foreigners forsaken in any number of ways by the citizens of a land. This same God counts it crucial that his people defend the cause of those who are easiest to abuse.
If you have been forsaken - by your parents, by your spouse, by people around you who count you "not one of us" - know this: When God finds you among the bereaved and discarded, he himself takes up your cause.
Long ago and far away, God promised a scattered people, “I will be a sanctuary to you during your time in exile,” and, “I will gather you back.”
When my father came home after his second bypass surgery, we did not expect what happened next.
Now, at last, my mom is getting to experience what a newborn should experience. But it didn't have to look like this. It didn't have to end where it should have begun, with the middle of the story lost in the chaos of trying again and again to rewrite the start.
My great-great-grandfather, Lorenzo Whitaker, fought for the Confederacy in the Battle of Gettysburg. He was wounded and taken prisoner in fighting that left his unit decimated and most of his comrades dead.
Mini-post. Quote about the effects of carried shame and carried feelings, from the book, I Don't Want to Talk About It.
