The title screen just flashed “Welcome Back” and I have to smile a little, the corners of my mouth are turning up. I speak to the keys at my fingers, “Hello old friends, maybe I remember how to do this.”  My last post was in 2018, March to be exact and I didn’t take a moment to read it.  I know I am being called back to this, have been for some time.  The Lord keeps speaking it to me but… Oh, with sorrow I remember the writers block that stunted me as the bricks slowly built the wall between me and the words; built the wall between Me and the Lord.  

18 months.  That is how long it has been.

I can set the time-machine back to a small handful of situations that cast me into the darkness of self-doubt.  I remember the moment I re-read a very early piece of writing, a piece where I mishandled scripture, instead of taking it to the Lord and asking what He’d have me do-I picked it up and tucked it deep inside so that I could pull it out later and use it against myself.  Then there was the time when life was getting a little too raw and I felt like I could not share the real me, the hard and vulnerable situation because of external influences and I, again, picked that up and tucked it in thinking I was protecting myself, my family and others.  In moments of silence, self-doubt and despair one can be really hard on themselves.  That’s where I was plus a bunch of life heaped on top of that… but something in me has given way, I cannot explain it.  

So much changes in 18 months.  

I have been pruned and plucked.  I have been stripped and re-clothed.  I have watched people go and have let them go.  I have been blessed with restoration and the old made new.  I have gotten mad at God and I have surrendered.  I have laid offerings at His feet, only to pick them up again. Like the good Father that He is, I have felt the whisper of His still soft voice as He as asked me to lay it down again.  There is a lot of I in this scenario and I have discovered that is okay because at some point I turned into we and the Lord met with me each and every time.  

This may have been a season of silence, of trial, and of growth for which I am grateful.  The season is not over… it may have only just begun.