It’s good to e-meet you!  In time, hopefully I’ll get to know your name, too, and your story. I look forward to that.

Meanwhile, a sort of summary of who I am:

I am ... a striver, I guess. I strive for some things and I’ve given up striving for some others.  As for most of us, the striving part is always a journey of hope and bridges, and the non-striving part is often a canyon of despair.

I believe that “God is good, and He is good all the time” but, because I have two profoundly disabled children with a so-called “mitochondrial myopathy” that they inherited from me, I sometimes think “Yes, He’s good, He’s always good, just not always to me”. In other words, I succumb to self-pity and tell myself that “life” – God – is unfair, and I wish like Job that He’d rather look past me, if that would stop Him picking on me.

I write mainly to process things, sometimes digging up half-buried grudges and nursing them back to life, but often, by the grace of God, to call out His name over all of the earth and to wave flags of blessing and reconciliation* and the goodwill to men that the angels sang about on the night Jesus was born.

Sometimes during writing God gives me insight into myself – and advice (that I usually don’t like). Then I keep on writing, hoping He’ll change His mind ... and then I cheat myself into paying attention by imagining He’s talking to all those other people who need this advice so much more than I do!

But then from pure helplessness I write some more, if I can bear it, and then – usually much later – I dare to obey: I get up out of the muck and I take Him at His word, no ifs or buts, and I begin – or I try to begin – to actively plan for the future and the hope that He has promised me. That He promises to all of us.

The Lord bless and keep you, and shine His face upon you.

Till next time,
Leona

*   II Cor. 5:16-21            **   Jer. 29:11