Holy Awakening

I need to call this time in my life a Holy Awakening. It is holy because it is sacred…. Sacred because it deeply involves all that is within me. Sacred because with my deep faith I would never have endured these years. Sacred because I am here, only by grace. In this Holy Awakening I am stirred to the core of all that I am and all that I know….

My mind travels back to the war in my childhood home…. The remembrance of holidays and seasons based solely in memories of the events of the trauma that enveloped those days…. and I scan the years that followed…. Wishing, dreaming, hoping for a rescue from a life of pain and sorrow and complete isolating loneliness…. Weeping in the forest, Pretending I was safe, Caring for the physical and emotional wounds that covered me, Hiding in the shadows as fear became extreme….

I look at back at all the entangled connections….. and the far too many broken relationships….. Searching for love, For the place of belonging, Longings unsatisfied….. Emptiness engulfed my lonely heart…..

Today I see the broken foundation, The confused idea of love, The familiar found in the broken and in the breaker……… Today I can look back and see the pain, The loss, The sorrow…. And then I turn to look ahead and I see…. The wholeness that comes after brokenness, The hope found after despair, And the strength that rises from weakness…..

Today I stand between Bethel and Ai…… Ancient mountains holding a symbol of old…. Bethel meaning holy… Ai meaning ruins….

In this Holy Awakening I stand…. Facing Bethel….. For I have left Ai.