A friend sent this.  Its rawness focused me.  Stripped away:  No Senior Pastor, children’s ministry, choir, adult studies, divorcecare, coffee/doughnuts, jamming music; No arms to crawl in with, sharing of tears, patterned days, striving, surviving….

Been there?  It is when you get stripped of pretence.  You get whipped.  You make wrong turns, the artillery patterns to your quadrants.  You are alone.  It is the slapping of life’s unexplained, unwarranted, unreasoned particulars that rip your heart, strip you bare. What do we have?  The unmerited/merited fashioned life percolates and then storms into our world and we are left holding…what??

We cannot even rationalize with intelligence.  The agony is too deep.  It blames us, incinerates and blisters.  It is unadulterated pain.  Choking and spitting.  Where oh where are can we secure relief? Where is our God?  The waves of terror sweep toward and over.  Nowhere is there sanctuary.  Our emotional state raw.

This is where we find the essence of loving Him, of decrying our pride of self and cry. We become detached of this life and pursue the fulfilling of Him to be true.

We can let the waves swallow us or renew…never going back to what was.  And find HIM.  HE loves us.  And we desire this forever.  No slurping the saccharine.