I Caved And Read A Book, Part 1

My three-month hiatus from Christian books and studies only has a few remaining weeks. However, there’s one book that’s been tempting me. I read a few pages a few weeks ago, and haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Yesterday I caved and read Love Letters to God, written by my long-distance, online friend, Lynn Morrissey.

Page after page, I wept as I read.

In the chapter, “Lists of Lament,” Lynn wrote, Naming our grief is the first step toward healing.

For months, I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how to find the healing I so desperately need. I’ve prayed and begged for Jesus to heal me, but I wasn’t even sure what I was asking for healing from. As soon as I read Lynn’s words, the name of my grief popped in my head: abandonment.

When I finished the book, I grabbed a pen and my notebook, and began to list all the ways I’d been abandoned, the ways I abandon others, my fears of being abandoned, my faulty belief that God abandons me when I don’t behave, and the one that keeps me in tears lately: the temptation to abandon my dreams and passions before I fail at achieving them.

When I completed the list, I journaled a prayer about all those issues. I scribbled down my scattered thoughts as quickly as they came. It was such a relief to actually put on paper {without editing} exactly what was in my head, without worrying about what the reader would think.

As I re-read my prayer in preparation for writing this post, I noticed something I wrote: I want to sing once again with abandonment in praise for Your love, grace, mercy and goodness to me. Ironic, isn’t it, that abandonment is my grief, yet it’s the very trait I subconsciously wrote to describe the way I desire to sing?

Is it possible that God will use the very issue that has caused me such grief to bring me joy, as well as praise to Himself?

Read Part 2