Just for a day...

Rainbows, Unicorns, Fairy Dust, Tea Parties

These are not words one would associate with me.

Serious, driven, passionate, brooding.

Those might be a better fit. I am not one for labels preferring instead to see myself as ever changing and evolving. At one time I might have changed this about myself, just for a day.  I even spent an almost three year period trying to change this about myself. It damn near killed me.

I don't like looking back on that period but looking back has propelled me forward to a place I can accept and embrace.  I live with a heavy heart.  I feel almost constantly. For many years I did not know what to do with these feelings, the pain, the joy of my own and other people.  For as long as I can remember I have put myself in other people's shoes if only for an instant.  Long enough to feel.  It has made me angry, disappointed, hurt, scared, desperate, raging, blinded, and overjoyed.  

Hard, harder, hardened.  I tried to be strong against these feelings, to push them away, to hide from them, to run away, to ignore.  I've medicated against them. None of which created the rainbow, unicorn, fairy dust, tea party atmosphere I thought could exist for me.

I have often viewed this trait of mine as a weakness.  Why can't I just be like everyone else? Why can't I just be happy? Why can't I find things funny? Why can't I just relax?

Just for a day?

I've literally tried to run myself into the place of Unicorns and Fairies and Rainbows and Tea Parties.

I kept running and running and seeing glimpses and willing them to appear.  Only to be exhausted.

Slowly over time I began to find God on my path.  Maybe He could help me find the Unicorns, only to discover that even Noah could not find them before he was commanded to set sail on the Ark.

I began to read God's word and learn of God's unending love for me.  I began to see and hear. Baby steps, baby steps. I addressed my fears, analyzed my faults, repented for my sins.  

God kept whispering.

Just for a day, He whispered lowest of all.  He was there as the love and light in that operating room.  He was there in the eyes of my third child.  He was there in the silence, denial, indifference, and inappropriateness of the doctor's and nurses who overlooked my child's differences, ignoring the obvious.

God spoke directly to my heart, causing me to see beauty that I never could have seen, forcing me to open my heart and believe.  Believing with an earnest fervor and peacefulness I had never experienced.  Sharing my belief openly, that IT did not matter.  Whatever IT was that no one would address, IT did not matter.

In Luke 6:10 Jesus says to the man with the withered hand "Stretch out your hand".  Jesus says this in front of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law and they are Angry.  In this simple act of acceptance and love the man's hand is restored and the men of the land are ANGRY.  Jesus showed them the power of surrendering your weaknesses to God by restoring the man's hand and the authorities were ANGRY.

How dare Jesus aide the weakest among them, the disabled man.  Did Jesus not know who THEY were?  You dare to usurp our authority? 

Power had gone to the heads of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. Power had made them ignore, deny, be apathetic to, and often persecute those who were different, disfigured, or disabled.  Power had made them more important than everyone else.  This Power fed on itself until they were unable to see the miracle before their eyes.

True power lies in the ability to surrender our weaknesses and our hurts to God so that we may be restored. This is no easy task.

I could have been angry at the doctor's and nurses who ignored IT when Bridgie was born. I could have ranted and raged and called in superiors.  I could have planned for their demise.  I could have acted like the Pharisee's and missed the miracle.

The miracle that lay in my arms looking up at me with her sideways glance.  The miracle that would solidify my relationship with Him.  The miracle that would help me finally accept myself and see all the gifts that had been given to me from birth.  The gifts that I had almost killed myself trying to rid myself of.
The miracle of life.

No, I don't live in a world full of rainbows, unicorns, fairy dust, and tea parties.
I walk with God, finding my way by listening for his whisper, looking for his footprints, choosing His way.

I surrender my weaknesses and hurts to Him on a daily, hourly, and sometimes minute by minute basis.

I struggle.

That I might make a difference.

Just for a day.

"With great power comes great responsibility"

Peter Parker