Gratitude Lounge

Thank you, Anna. Your encouragement, indeed the encouragement of these blessed people in this sacred space has had a potent role in moving me towards this point over the last year. Our sharing here, the depth of the friendships despite the miles between us all, is a potent blessing to me on multiple levels. I am very grateful for you all and this wonderful place!

What I do know is that this is the next step that I had been asking to be shown. My frequent prayer is, “God, please show me the next step and give me the courage to take it.” Sometimes the answer is small, and sometimes a bit larger, like this. 🙂

Thank you, Diane, your words touch my heart. Yes, I would love to have you as a reader! If everyone who has said they will follow does, it will be like going to meet old friends!

The anxiety producing part is, strangely, not the writing and the going forward but rather has roots in the past. My life is largely centered around healing and growth, as will be the blog. As my story of my healing journey emerges through connecting to others, I will be breaking the injunctions to silence that were placed on me many years ago. Like I said, old roots. I suppose it does not help that the woman who asked me to guest blog actually DID have her parents go after her and attempt to force her to shut down her blog. Not that I think that likely, but it is a big step just to speak up, really. So yes, candles welcome! Light me a Menorah, if you feel like it! 😉

In the end, though, it is really just more opportunity to practice dealing with anxiety. The likelihood of drama over it is likely not as large as it seems in imagination. I shall just have to be grateful for the opportunity to practice!

Diane, I agree. I, too, was always saddened and puzzled by Leah’s lack of acceptance no matter how well she “performed” her duties. There was nothing she could do to make Jacob love her more, just as there was seemingly nothing Rachel could do to be loved any less. Even in death, she reigned supreme in Jacob’s heart, and Leah could never step into her place.

And the ripples that flowed out from that dynamic were intense. They reached all the way to a young boy dumped in a hole and left for dead, a grieving father presented with the false evidence of a bloodied coat, a grief that was not abated for many years when the old father was near death. It moved through the boy’s new life as a slave and alien, his imprisonment on false charges, his miraculous gift for dream speak, and ultimate elevation to a position that saved many people from death by famine — including the very brothers whose jealousy had set the wheels in motion all those years earlier.

Joseph is a prime example of God’s ability to bring good out of evil, and to set the wheels of blessing in motion alongside the wheels of abandonment, danger, pain, and suffering. His quote says it all, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”

I need to remember this more often. So often when we are confronted with evil, pain, loss, or suffering we cannot do much, if anything, about, whether on a personal or global scale, we wind up, like Joseph, in a hole we do not wish to be in. We need to remember that we do not see the bigger picture. We do not know the end from the beginning or even where in the story we fit. Somehow, somewhere there is more than what we now see.