Your grieving heart senses the growling of your enemies, and your heart pounds. Your sadness fuels the monsters’ hope that they can entice you with illusions, luring you away from Me.
Ignore them.
They whisper in the bushes to draw you into their darkness.
Trust Me.
They can’t touch you unless you join them.
Who are these monsters? Despair. Doubt. Discouragement. Defeat. They will pull you down.
Don’t be fooled. Nothing can steal you away from Me unless you agree to go. Remain in My embrace, where My presence surrounds you.
You can walk with joy, not fear. With boldness, not resentment.
Stay with Me and ignore the monsters who long to derail your future.
Stay.
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.
Great is our Lord and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite.
The Lord supports the afflicted; He brings down the wicked to the ground.
Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; Sing praises to our God on the lyre
Tip back your head. Open your mouth and let the gentle rain of healing pour in. I offer newness because I am the Great Healer.
Who can touch the bruised spots and make them whole again? I am able. I restore with love and truth and joy.
Trust me to restore what loss shattered. You think stepping forward is too painful, but I call you to walk with me. My strength is sufficient to bear the pain.
Don’t trust the voices in your own head, but listen to the One who loves you most. Allow me to renew your brokenness. I am pouring into you. Open your heart and let me in.
“I will comfort those who mourn, bringing words of praise to their lips. May they have abundant peace, both near and far,” says the Lord, who heals them. Isaiah 57:18-19
The trees grow thick with glossy green leaves. Wildflowers spray their blues and yellows and purples across the meadow.
The flutter of bird wings stops when they settle into their triumphant songs.
But there’s more. You imagine the warmth of an embrace, the gentleness of a kiss, the brightness of the morning sun on your face softly shaking you awake.
The past is rich and strong, the fabric of your life. You were formed by your past, by the love others poured into you. The faith and honor they entrusted in you.
To you much has been given.
And here is the temptation: to linger too long. To wrap yourself in yesterday’s meadow, to let memory soothe you until it becomes a place of hiding. Comfort can be a gift, but it can also be a snare.
You can’t remain in the past. It’s only a quick indulgence to peek at what is there. The wildflowers will fade if you try to hold them too tightly.
Now it is time: the doors into your future are opening by My hand. Don’t remain in this place. Walk forward.
Your steps matter. If you stay, the blessing stops with you. But if you move ahead, your future will become a sweet past for someone else. For someone who needs the beauty you experienced. Share it.
Here’s your quiz: what do four states, Carhenge, and a tornado have in common? If you said my sister and me, you’ve been paying attention.
This all got started when my sister and I drove six hours from home, into Wyoming, to visit family. We had a full day for the return trip, so why not go a different way?
Ah, you can see the problems forming like storm clouds on the horizon, huh?
Hold that metaphor. You’ll need it later.
We started out in Wyoming (state one) and drove east to Rapid City, South Dakota (state two) for breakfast. The skies were vast and clear blue.
Then we turned south toward Scottsbluff, Nebraska (state three), inspired by the prairie, the rocky bluffs, and massive fluffy clouds.
Detouring to the Replica
Then somebody in the car who wasn’t me wanted to go to Carhenge. Why not? We re-programmed our maps app.
Carhenge features dented cars and pickups buried and arranged like a to-scale replica of Stonehenge.
The founder’s motto is “Why not?”
After checking out every old car in the park, we reprogrammed our maps app to take us home. We’d get back to Colorado (state four) early afternoon.
That’s what we thought.
Our maps took us east. We didn’t notice because the road curved like limp spaghetti. Well, and because we were talking a lot, too.
“We’d better not be going through Sidney,” I said.
“Why?”
“It’s out of our way.” I checked the app.
Going East After All
We were heading straight for Sidney. Too late to correct. We were better off staying the course and getting home from the east rather than north.
As we closed in on our hometown, I was studying the weather app when my sister said, “Those clouds south of us look ugly.”
“Radar shows the red spot in the storm will stay south of us. You won’t have to drive through it this time.”
When we were out on the road and came onto a storm, she was always the one driving through the red spot–that howling, angry rain-and-wind part of the storm. She gets growly about that sometimes. “Do you see what I see?”
What We Both Saw
I looked up from the app. “A tornado.” I loaded up the camera app.
I shot pictures while she fidgeted. To be fair, the tornado was more of a wannabe with a wimpy, pale tail.
“It won’t cross the road,” I said, looking at the weather app again. “And it’s dissipating.”
“I’m not driving past a tornado.” She veered across two lanes of traffic--she checked first--and took us off in yet another direction.
Our six-hour trip took about ten hours. But the tornado subsided. We visited Carhenge. And we did not go through a fifth state to get home. A good day overall.
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