Pain

Facebook, comments on one of my photos:
Julie wrote:
"yep, looks like your home...beautiful..."

Wayne wrote:
"Now Now"


Those two quotes mean nothing to anyone other than me, my son who responded earlier, and my sister who also responded earlier than Julie. After the family blow-up this last summer, the first one was intended as, and came as, a direct dart from Satan. A dart to accuse falsely, to wound, to discourage, to anger - a word straight from the pit of hell. It may read as nice, but I hear and understand the venom on the tip of the arrow. Poisonous. Evil.

I responded simply: John 14:1-3
No words, nothing more.
(“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.)

I have no home here on earth. The closest place that comes to "home" is where my parents are, where my children are: Colorado, specifically Teller and El Paso Counties. That is a pretty large area to call "home". There is no house, to mobile home, no tent, no camper that I can say of, "This is my home." The flat we live in here in Kherson is the place I have lived the longest since I left home at 18 years of age. Yet, when we pay the rent tomorrow, we will be telling the landlord and landlady that we want to live in their home for another 6 months. When we leave Ukraine, we have no idea where we will eventually end up. Colorado? Washington state? Arizona? some place totally off our radar screen at this time? We don't know.

I live very light now. Most of the things I would want to keep 'forever' could be boxed up in a couple boxes and shipped at a moments notice. The rest is just convenience stuff. And if those couple of boxes were lost - so be it. I have to hold things in an open palm, not a tightly clenched fist. My security is not in people or things, my security - MY HOME is in Christ Jesus.

I thank God every day for my husband. I would be so lost without him. I cannot imagine life without him. Yet he, too, I must hold in an open palm. He is not mine, he is the Lord's. And I have to trust God for that - all of it.

So, the pain is there this morning once again. It hurts to know that my own flesh and blood can resent me, hate me? so very much. Yet, in the long run, she is the one being destroyed by bitterness, anger and hate.

Father God in heaven, pour your soothing oil over the pain. Help me to keep my eyes focused on You and You alone. Help me to remember my Elder Brother - if they hated Him, they will hate us. I am yours, Father, and no one and no thing can pluck me out of your hand.

Luke 12:24 Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!