"You, LORD, are my lamp; the LORD turns my darkness into light." 2 Samuel 22:29 NIV
I remember the total darkness I lived in when my sons were active in their addictions. I had tried everything, and they had also tried to be free from their desire to use. I was fortunate that their journeys were independent of each other with one ending before the other began.
But in some ways, that wore out my endurance. It tired me out. By the time my oldest son was struggling with substance abuse, his brother was well into his recovery. But I was spiraling even further into my sickness.
I had fallen into a puddle of muck and it was sticky and dark, and there was no getting out. My need to control, rescue and fix had became like quicksand, and I was stuck.
“You have to fix your son” played repeatedly like a broken record in my head. I really believed I had lost it and there was no finding “it”, whatever “it” was.
I needed hope and I needed it now. I just didn’t have the energy to find it or even look for it.
I had pleaded with God and gone broke emotionally and financially trying to save my sons. It took them being ready to admit that their way of doing things wasn’t working for them to start getting better.
I was worse off than them in a lot of ways. I claimed to have a “relationship” with the Lord. I kept telling them to trust the Lord and surrender, even as my resistance and insistence on doing things my own way persisted.
But being in that pit sucked and I wanted out. This time I pleaded with the Lord to rescue “me” and to fix “me”. Then, I remembered my first love. I wanted that back. I wanted to get up in the morning and think of Jesus first, not how I was going to fix my kids.
And that’s where I needed to be, in complete darkness with a little ray of hope beaming in and stroking my cheeks. It was in the little beam that I began to heal.
That’s where many of you are today. My encouragement to you is to enjoy the warmth of that ray of light, no matter how small it might be.
It may be dark, but even in the darkness, there is light. There is hope. And even in the evil that swirls around us demanding that it is in control, there is goodness because God is good and He loves us.
May you find that light and hold on tight and remember that the Lord is there. May you find it in His presence and in His word. May you find it in praise and worship of the very one who is our Light and our Hope.
Dear Lord Of Hope.
We are so grateful that Your light guides us. Even in the darkness, Your light shines and brings us hope.
Amen.
Beautiful Blessings, Dawn
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