{Day 359}

It’s been happening these last few months.  The first time it happened I had been in a deep sleep when all of the sudden I awoke gasping for that precious commodity that I so often disregard…air.  My lungs tightened and I fought to pull oxygen back into the villi.  Sometimes the struggle lasts for hours of me trying to gulp down air.  And I realize how much I’ve taken for granted when all I can focus on is each breath.  Then I’m struck by the fact that my dear sweet friend struggles with this continually.  How that port in her chest is the only thing keeping her alive and how I’m so blessed to not have to deal with the trial she so graciously bears.  Her with her beautiful smile and joyful heart that challenges and encourages me.

Most of my good thinking time happens when I’m lying in bed trying to fall asleep.  While resting there the other night I heard Jesus’ gentle voice.  You see I’ve given lists of things I’m grateful for on this blog but he asked me to do something else this time. He asked me to give thanks not just for the things that rasping lungs and searing, raw eczema are producing in life but to actually thank him for the lack of oxygen and for the painful, ugly skin.  To publicly declare on here what can be hard to say, that I’m thankful for not just the easy things but the painful ones.  When I did that there was this joy that washed over me.  No, it isn’t easy but there is something of greater value that I feel like I’m always just still right at the beginning of learning.  That God brings beauty from ashes.  I love analogies and Jesus gave me one the other night to encourage me.  You know those fun and silly glow sticks that you get at parties or around the Fourth of July?  Well picture holding one of those in a completely dark room.  What do you do to it?  You break it.  You crack it.  And the more you crack and break it the more that it shines and glows.  My body feels broken and weak right now but oh how I pray that the breaking and cracking will produce the most beautiful glow.  A glow that comes not from me but from Jesus.  That like one of my favorite verses states that I would look to Him and be radiant.  That is my heart cry.  So while my body may be weak and while it may even be hard to tell you that in a world that tells me to show you that I’m strong I want to admit today what I already know to be true.  That I am weak but my God is strong.  What I’m learning right now I would rather have than all of the purest oxygen and most clear, perfect skin in the world.  Because I’m seeing afresh the love the Lord has for me when he gave up his breath and he allowed his skin to be ripped and bloody.  Willingly he did that for me.  Willingly! And that?  Well that leaves me speechless…

P.S.  Guess what’s coming up in just two days?!  I have a special post for you on May 1st so be looking for it. 🙂

(All the pictures are taken by me on a photo safari walk I did in my neighborhood.  As is the style of my blog the pictures don’t go with the post but I’m a firm believer that posts with pictures are better…) 🙂