Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Daily 5 - Day 334

Today's Daily 5:
  1. another day where things actually came off the list, instead of being added
  2. major accomplishment tonight (in my mind at least) - I finished making a set of flashcards for a list of 60 or so muscles that I need to memorize a great deal of information about in a short period of time.  those flashcards were a time consuming task, and I was so delighted when I laid down the pen and was able to declare them complete.
  3. I did some housework at mom and dad's today - weeding and washing a couple of windows.  Both of these tasks are actually quite amusing given my internal landscape lately, and the very thought of doing those acts today makes me chuckle
  4. took the bus home tonight, and it was on time.
  5. having time to catch up on reading and blog reading today.

Start with "He Loves Me"

In keeping with yesterday's post, I have another link, this time to a cartoon from NakedPastor.

It struck me deeply when I saw it first.  Largely because the last several days have been filled with the constant thematic reminder of God's deep love, for me, for his people, for the church, for the nations.  My heart has been full as I realize all of this again.

Not full in a way where that love makes the problems, the agonies disappear, but full in the way, that, like the "prayer from the cell" that I linked to yesterday, the reminder of the layers upon layers of His love is somehow enough to bring rest.

I will never forget, somewhere midway through the seven long years I suffered from severe depression, writing a dear friend, also not from a particularly experiential circle of Christianity if she knew, really knew that God loved her, deep inside her, not just in a head knowledge sort of way.  Her answer ("yes") surprised me, and spurred a quest of sorts.  I had honestly believed that God's wasn't something that could truly be felt or experienced, and then I'd met people who said it could, spurring the question I asked my friend.

In the intervening years I have come to know that love in immense ways, in startling ways, in healing ways.  I knew it first in the patience of friends who walked with me through depression, and then in that sudden and unexpected moment of healing.  I've known it as I've journeyed through the nearly five years since that moment of healing, through loss of deep relationships, through shattered dreams, through moments of great joy and answered prayer.  It has been a constant, an intangible constant, and somehow, that deep, constant truth, however hard it is at times to cling to, is enough.

And the cartoon?  "Start with, 'He loves me'" is an image that rings in my heart right now.  An only option.  A gentle direction.  A whispered shout.  It moved me deeply, as it played up against the themes building and playing through my waking life, and my nightly dreams this week, and I'm grateful for it.