A letter to my friends

Dear Friends,

I wanted to keep you in the picture where my own emotional state is, as I know you all have prayed about that too. 

Yesterday, I woke up around 3:15am, and started crying because I couldn't give my little girl a party for her birthday, or even go and see her, or wish her happy birthday and expect she will see it. So I started praying, and searching the Scriptures, and waiting on the Lord. For two hours I did this. I posted "I love you" all down her Facebook wall, in hopes somehow she could see it, but I don't think she looks at it anymore at all.

Then, around 5:30am, as I was reading the Psalms, God brought to me over and over certain ones of the songs He gave his people all those centuries ago that exactly speak to my situation. I pondered this, and other evidences of God's love in my life recently, and understood that He wants me to TRUST Him. My daughter had given me some warning of all this, a couple weeks before it happened. But being Christmas and New Year's, I had pushed it all into the back of my mind (which was, I'm sure, what some intended). I reviewed her words to me, as far as I can remember them in my addled brain, and the word that most came to the fore was TRUST. She wanted us to trust her. And so I have decided to do just that, really trusting in GOD'S ability to keep her safe, and her intention not to harm us whom she loves. She made me understand then that she wanted to keep us from any more pain and hardship than was necessary.

I believed then that she was getting into some kind of trouble, but didn't know what, nor how to get her to listen to me, so didn't push it at the time. And the holidays sent it clean out of my mind, together with a life decision I was working on, and an unexpected, positive, life-changing experience. For this I have been full of guilt at times, as the enemy hurls his darts at me. But God is faithful to remind me of His forgiveness, and gives the peace which passes all understanding in this situation. I know I am loved with a love as vast as the ocean, and I know I am in the center of His will, seeking a way to serve Him completely at last.

And so I came to peace in the end, TRUSTING in God's almighty hand on my daughter, TRUSTING the Spirit within her, TRUSTING her own intentions as they are good. If the lesson in TRUST had not begun in December, I do not know if I would have been able to face yesterday. But God is able, who delivers me from the wily snares of the enemy. And His timing is oh! so perfect!

And so throughout her birthday, I was given guidance and assurance that I could rest on His unchanging love, and I laid down the heavy burden of rescuing my daughter from the place she'd got herself by her ignorance of the world, and took up the burden which is light, which is simply TRUSTING the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence of the God of the universe instead.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise God all creatures here below.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Praise God, the Source of all our gifts,
Praise Jesus Christ, whose power uplifts,
Praise the Spirit, Holy Spirit,
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!!

Simply loved,
Patty