It was one of those weird thoughts that sometimes pops into our mind. I think it might have been prompted by something someone said on a show I was watching last night.

Anyway, I grabbed a notepad and started listing all the homes I’ve lived in since I left my parent’s home at 17. The total came to 27 homes. Wow, what a journey I’ve taken! And each one carried a whole slew of memories and experiences. What a great question for someone with a life like mine to answer. I could write a book about each one!! Lol.
But here’s the gist of the exercise for me.

First, oddly, I saw all the times that I got beat up by my life. Either through relationships or circumstances. And none of them were slight or inconsequential. Every one of them was traumatic and full of great suffering. It was almost overwhelming to see them all grouped together in a list on a small sheet of paper. And I marveled that I’m alive and well today.

How did I do it? How did I get up from each devastation and stand up again? Was I really that resilient and determined to live? Nope. Not at all. Rather with each one, it seemed I was laying on the ground in the mud decimated to the core. Irretrievably destroyed and without an ounce of heart to recover.

I remember in one particular trauma I felt like a human robot without life whose flesh was hanging off in shreds as I starred at the ground and put one foot in front of the other. I wrote a poem during that time which someone read and exclaimed how grotesque and gory my descriptions sounded. Well, writers write what’s real to them.

Now I look back on those experiences and realize that my survival was a mixture of things. Most often Father sent something…a last string in which to tie a knot and hold on for the day. Sometimes the odd message on a billboard. A song on the radio. A stranger’s comment. And there’d be a tiny spark in it which distracted my mind from my suffering and hooked a piece of my still-beating heart. Then day by day, I’d begin asking for those tidbits of manna and he’d continue sending them. Never missing a beat. Even if it took a year or two. But the day would come when I’d wake up one morning and realize that I wasn’t tortured anymore. I had survived. And I was alive and hopeful once again.

These days I’ve been listening to the terrible division between two large sections of our population. And I’ve heard both of them. But they can’t seem to tune in to each other…nor comprehend the other’s thoughts or how they came to be.

It isn’t the fault of ideologies as we’d like to simplistically blame. They’ve been around era after era as easy crutches for the basic human need.
It’s the horrible conditions of hearts and the great damage they’ve suffered in their lives that leads them to embrace ideologies for reasoning and escape. They use them as their tiny threads to tie their knots and hold onto while they walk about like a shredded zombie apocalypse, unable to bear their pain.

Father hasn’t abandoned them any more than he had me. It feels like it while we’re inside the torment…that he doesn’t necessarily take away. And that’s because he wants us to learn to stand up inside the fire…to endure…to grasp those daily dollops of manna…until the day we wake up and realize we have overcome.

How amazing would it be for one completely trashed zombie to see that tiniest spark and grab on…and to keep doing so each day until their nightmare is overcome? I’m sure it isn’t something that can be preached to the masses, else the problem wouldn’t exist today. Nor is it something that can actually be taught. Rather it’s Father’s persistence in sending that tiny daily message through surprising, unknown methods which he never ceases to send.

You might be a method for a moment. Even if you’re still walking through your own torment. It might even be a glorious silver strand for you to encourage someone to tie a knot even when you are grasping for your own thread.

There is always a thread. Always.
Blessings, my precious friends.
Faith