Ok, so it has been over two months since I've written. A crazy two months. My precious nephew was born...Xavier Deuteronomy Jones. The huge work deadline that has hung over my head for 9 months of this year has finally come and gone, with success. My sister got a cyst that was huge, had surgery, found out it was benign, and has been recovering for the last 5 weeks. I started working part-time and have been playing "catch up" on the many things in my life that have fallen to the wayside since February.

I have felt myself be distant from myself and God. On Monday night at the House of Prayer, He told me that it is now safe to unpack myself...all those emotions and thoughts that have had to stay somewhere until I had the time to let them out. Today I had a retreat day. Time. I had a few instructions from Him on how to unpack myself...and so it began...a flood of tears and of healing. Grief over what has been lost in the last year, amazement that He is still here, I am not lost, and that the Fortress has been waiting for me.

Here is a section of a Mike Bickel book that I was drawn to today. "I speak this confession to God when I face pain and pressure: I am loved, and I love You; therefore I am successful. I love You even when my love is only in seed form and is still immature. Even though my love is weak, the position of my soul is to be a lover.... Pain drives our soul into the secret place...in that posture of refocusing my soul....It is like a muscle that is worked over and over. My heart keeps enlarging in the absolute truth that I am loved, I am a lover, and therefore, I am successful."

O my Rock, help this truth to go deep.