Our morning conversation did not entertain too much small-talk today — grace-filled, honest, tearful, challenging and encouraging all at the same time. My friend, my sister, my mentor, with kind but deft, insistent fingers, handled my heart and teased out questions and answers with skills learned through diligence and study, and gifting , yes, but also through wisdom gleaned on her own pain-filled but God-directed life-journey.
As we closed in prayer, I identified with her mother-heart’s cry for her youngest, who that very moment was in a mental health evaluation facility. All who know her scream a collective “Why!?”. Yet we have learned the grace of the open hand through this faithful, warrior-Mom’s example and, with her, stand on our watch to see what He will do.
Standing with her this morning in prayer, I saw the Lord’s assurance of His Sovereign grace over this situation in the form of His Hand as a massive, wide-spanning wing over that health facility, over that precious righteous seed. Each feather soon became identified as an aspect of the select care He was overseeing for her (nothing random here)— the medical professionals, the medications she would imbibe, the therapists, the treatments— all established, pinioned and aligned to suit a purpose momentarily veiled to our earth-bound eyes.
What assurance! What a place to fix our eyes when we long to rail against the darkness, the clouded, the shadowed, the Hard. Remember, then, my fevered soul, you are no ordinary chick, you are His. There settle down and ride it out; you are under His Wings.
With apologies to William Cowper:
“Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,”
Lift now your burdened head
See over all and underneath
Eternal Wings outspread-
Resplendent pinions flashing fierce
With span too grand for earthly sight
Are still the tender, broody kind
That succor and give might.
To you my friend; you make me want to be brave too.
DSA
Creative Non-Fiction Essays to Enjoy with a Cup of Tea 