Oh how I wanted to skip this Five Minute Friday because I knew immediately what I needed to write about.  And it’s oh-so-personal and painful.  Like any painful thing, though, there can be beauty in the ending.  So, I pray you will find the beauty here.

 

Fall.

Sometimes, when life circumstances or sin issues overcome us, we fall.

And so last Fall, I fell, and I fell hard.

After a long year of trying to sell our home, we spent the summer moving to a new town, with a culture all its own.  It’s a small country town, and I love the quiet of it, the friendly feel of it.  The summer was a whirlwind of remodeling and unpacking and general chaos.

So, when the long, quiet, isolated days of winter came and I had little to do but sit with my thoughts, I began to mourn.

I mourned for the family and friends who used to live nearby.

I mourned for our YMCA with its lovely child watch room.

I mourned for the fellowship of our previous church.

I mourned for my work-out buddy.

I mourned for the amazing children’s section of our old library, the convenience of grocery stores and Walmart, the trusted babyistters who lived nearby, and on and on.

At the same time, my marriage relationship was under a great deal of stress, so I was mourning the temporary loss of my best friend, as well.  And as I sit here and write this, tears fall because the pain of loss was so, so great.  It overwhelmed me.

I felt alone and abandoned, even by God.

And that’s when I fell.

I quit believing that He only allows things into my life that will be worked out for good.  I quit believing that He was by my side, mourning right along with me. I  failed to understand the purpose in His choice to remove almost every comfort from my life simultaneously.

Falling is hard.

It’s painful.

It brings sadness and shame along with it.

But on the other side of falling, is being picked up.  Just like when my sweet little daughter falls and scrapes her leg. It hurts and we want the pain to go away, but there is also comfort there.  There are loving arms to envelope us, to chase the sadness away.

Sometimes we fight those arms and we fail to find comfort.  And that’s where I sat for a time.  I blamed God for so many things in my life, even my own sin (gasp! yes, it’s true).  But He never let go of me, even as I thrashed about and begged for release.

In a weird way, I’m glad I fell because it gave Him a chance to show me just how full His love is for me – that even when I’m downright nasty and ugly to Him, and sometimes even to those around me, He loves me anyway.

When you fall down, He picks you up.

Because He loves you anyway.

Praise the Lord!

Jen 🙂

Sharing with: Tell His Story, Tell It To Me Tuesdays, Wholehearted Wednesdays, A Little R & R Wednesdays

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