Cast adrift like a little wooden boat on a grey, misty sea. That’s the image that came to her as she lay in bed, unable to sleep. Have you cast us off Lord?
No sense of His presence or His voice, just grey aloneness.
I’ll still trust you, I’ll still believe you, even if I can’t feel you.
She’d been in this place before. She’d had a friend describe this time as being like a plant. It needs darkness to grow, it can’t be in the sun all the time, so too she may face times in her life, of darkness, where nothing is clear, where prayers hit the ceiling and God seems to have abandoned her.
I’ll still trust you, I’ll still believe you, even if I can’t see you.
She woke with a crushing sadness and sense of hopelessness.
As she shared this cast adrift sense to those that love her most that night, she caught a glimpse…a glimpse of the shore.
She remembered her youth onboard a ship, after days and days of endless sea, of storms and waves 6 metres high, of waking one morning, the sea strangely calm. Lifting the shade of her porthole window, and seeing an island, a sunbathed shore, palms waving their greeting, a language and culture to explore. The excitement and wonder of discovering something new.
She holds on tight to that picture, even as the grey mist swirls. That little boat has faith tucked away as ballast, it’s what’s keeping her steady.
I’ll still trust you, I’ll still believe you, I still choose to praise you, I don’t understand right now, but I will.
And she waits for her time in the sun, on the shore once more.
Psalm 22
Great lines Alison. Welcome back. Love you heaps.
Hi Allison, I can relay to this story as I have been there a few times, when I felt abandoned and lost and so empty with many questions and why and not at all ready to have lost the love of my life so unexpected and so sudden. I suddenly had to make decisions on my own and go places on my own and felt so vulnerable. The pain was intense and thinking will it ever go away and where is God, as I couldn’t feel Him let alone I found it so hard to pray, yet I believed and new He was there holding me but your thoughts are so far away and couldn’t focus. Just as well it was only for a while and really God was my comfort and my strength. I really am not a person to hold onto my misery as I rather be comforting and helping other through difficult times. God is good all the time ran through my mind often. God allows things to happen and also to go through darkness and despair to help you grow. You can’t often see it at the time but later on you see God piecing things back together again and He becomes alive and so very near to you. You start to see the picture where He has been shaping you and allowing you to use those experiences to help others. I look at it now as a gift from God.