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I have this amazing friend that I met through social media who is an amazing quilter. The great "pond" separates us. I have said a thousand times that one day, I am going to get on my broom and fly over, walk into her shop one day to surprise the thread out of her stitching! When I was on the golf course with Garrett and the Special Olympic team as they practiced last week, I found a white perfect feather. I had to take a photo of it. My friend posted that she had seen so many feather this past week and I replied that it was a sign for her to design a feather themed quilt. When I gave the feather I found to Garrett and he quoted the verse, somewhat, of "Eagles wings..." When I went to find the verse to put with the photograph, I came across Psalm 91:4, "He will come you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness will be your shield..." Taking the imagery of a mother bird and her babies within a carefully constructed nest is the way God is with us. We can't be plucked from His refuge if we believe and put our faith in Him.
Over the past few weeks, I have talked with many people about their life journeys and decisions to get healthy. The stories are vast and reasoning to make a difference in their lives will encourage others like a ripple in a stream as pebble is skipped across the waters. That is the way the witness of anything we do in our lives should be, to encourage and press others toward their goals and dreams.
One story is of a woman who lived through a tragedy that I will tell you now will be difficult to hear, read or write. You may want to leave now. As the story unfolds, she was thirteen at the time, living in a subdivision in an upper income neighborhood. The people had lived there most of her life and her family knew they all well. On this particular afternoon, she had been riding her bike and stopped in the driveway of an older couple's house. The drive was to the side of their home which was on the corner of two streets. As they chatted, the wife went into the house and the older man walked over to her bike and before she realized what was happening, he pulled her off her bike, hand over her mouth, leaving it in the driveway and pulled her behind the house. Threatening her, he raped her. When he was done, he simply left her there and went into the house. When she was able to get her clothes back on, she made it to her bike and walked home. When she went into the backdoor of her house, she walked into a heated argument between her parents with her mother crying. The young girl, broken and not sure what to do, went to the bathroom, cleaned up and went back outside.
When I found my voice, I asked, "What did you do?" It was chilling to know that there was no voice to never telling what has happened to not this one but so many. She didn't tell of the experience and the man never acknowledged what he had done. When she went outside, she knew she had a choice to let it take up space in her head or let it go because her home life wasn't stable nor did she thing anyone would believe her. Then she said, "While I was being raped, I prayed for God to protect me. It was the strangest thing that at that moment I saw a bright light and don't remember all the details of what he did not even to this day. One thing I knew, I trusted in Christ that very moment with my life, heart and soul." As an adult she told her mother about what happened to her, just as she thought, her mother didn't believe her nor did her siblings. The man died long before her telling her story. However, feathering things in grace multiplies like the grass under our feet when we trust Him for our protection and with our very lives.
Once again, I see forgiveness, grace and living in peace. We have a choice to allow crises and circumstances to rent space in our heads, live in chains, prisons and bondage or we can take the key we hold in our hands and use it at anytime. Freedom is ours, the door can be open, chains can be broken and prisons can be released. We live with no excuses for wallowing in our on whining, bitterness, pasts or circumstances. It is a choice. Why allow anything to take up residence even for a second within our being other than what is joyful, good and godly? Living forgiveness, grace and love is living a life free, with no excuses. It's time to live a healthy lifestyle and it begins with breaking free without and within our being.
Break the chains that hold you from freedom...
Live a life with no excuses...
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