Good morning…
“I’m sensing a difficult time for you right now, and I’m praying for you and missing you,” began my dear friend’s email from yesterday. As I write in transparency, people see me, sense me, surround me with prayer. In the early morning hours, I felt supported by my friend, loved, known, understood.
“Thank you for intuiting my challenging time,” I responded. “I am in new territory inside myself, feeling the gentle falling away of outdated defenses. My self-protective layers are less and less needed as God strengthens me from within my soft, sensitive skin. I feel both stretched and strengthened in new ways, ways that are allowing me to love more freely, with less guardedness, to love freely even the hardest people in my life.”
My email continued: “Since learning to love well in my favorite small, Pennsylvania town, I have cultivated close, inner-circle friends, women with whom I love and am loved deeply, mutually. But now, in a scary way, I feel God asking me to trust Him more completely, trust Him to be my layer of protection with every person. From within my heart, God’s unconditional love is intended to grow, to flow, to increasingly overflow to all people. I feel my true self more at home, not just with those I trust, but with those, in mistrust, I have guarded myself for years.”
I explained further: “So the pain you hear in my writing is real, much like the growing pains of a teenager, whose body is forced to adapt to fast, aching expansion. I thank you for praying for me, that I might remain at peace, well protected, in God’s ever presence. Our LORD is within and around me, behind and ahead of me, and in the presence of God I am hemmed in, kept safe. Morning after morning, I marry the Prince of Peace and in that union I have everything I need. How about that answer before 7:00 am!”
“How might I pray for you, my sweet friend?” continued our online conversation.
LORD, You are wonderful,
and while everyone watches,
you store up blessings for all
who honor and trust you.
You are their shelter
from harmful plots,
and you are their protection
from vicious gossip.
I will praise you, Lord,
for showing great kindness
when I was like a city
under attack.
I was terrified and thought,
“They’ve chased me
far away from you!”
But you answered my prayer
when I shouted for help (Psalm 31:19-22, CEV).
…Sue…
