Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Strangers Aren't Always Bad

This past weekend I was blessed with being able to spend a little time with my stepsister Melodie.  Before she left to return home to Nashville, she handed me a gift from her and her husband Jon.  Also with the gift was a card from one of Melodie's friends, a woman whom I have never met.  She gave me this on Saturday evening, and I waited until this morning to open it.  Don't know why, I just did.  Maybe I waited because it needed to be the right moment for me to read it.  The last week or so I have not felt as good, and have been struggling a little mentally.  So, this card from a perfect stranger is evidently exactly what God knew I needed at exactly the right moment.  

This is the card



I'm not sure if you can read what this card says or not, but the second paragraph talks about how this woman was rooting around in her overgrown garden three weeks ago and came across a plaque.  She didn't sense the plaque was meant for her.  As she was driving in her car praying, she sensed the plaque was meant for me.

This is the plaque.

She proceeds to say that she then asked her daughter to pray, and if she felt lead too, then she should write a poem.  This was the poem...

Relapse
I thought I had conquered
That my battle ended there
I believed I was victorious
But the depths of my heart harbored fear

I lived my days in triumph
My song was free and light
Still the darkness quivered
In the edges of my sight

And then, at once, it all collapsed
It brought me to my knees
I had hoped and prayed
This shouldn't pass
Now my cries of despair shook the trees

"For what?" I choked
Under a sky tauntingly blue
"To what end?" I pleaded
With knees soaked in dew

Not expecting an answer
Wanting only to mourn
For my story cut short
For possibilities shorn

I felt my battered soul return
To a searing place of numb despair
Where spiny cells imprisoned joy
Where cancer held me scared

I had fought and won the battles
I had clawed and scratched through hell
But this micro bio terror
Might still toll my final bell

In the suffocating blackness
In my consuming misery
A voice resounded, clear and low,
"It's time.  Abide in me."

I couldn't breathe to speak
No sound escaped my lips
But I felt my body answer
As my Creator took me in His grip

He gently disentangled me
From the anguish that enveloped
And though its aftermath remained
Something else developed

I felt a warmth, a confidence,
But, more than that, I knew
That God would help me persevere
If His will I would pursue

So, though I don't know how it ends
Or how my life's played out
The breaths I breathe, few or many
come from Judah's Lion's mouth

I know.  I cried too.
It's amazing how God works.  Two women I have never met provided me with a gift that has forever touched my heart.  God knew I needed these strangers to help get me thru and overcome the bad days.  And the poem.  The poem couldn't be more accurate if I had written it myself.  It presents my thoughts and feelings through all of this, as if I had told her in my own words.  

I don't know if these ladies read this blog or not, but if they do...THANK YOU WONDERFUL STRANGERS!!!!  YOU HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE!!

 

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