My spacious place

Hello, God.

This is how it was.

I was trapped in a deep, deep hole. A mine-shaft. It went down and down and down and I was flat against the wall on a ledge only wide enough for my feet. Unstable and terrified of falling off. It was so deep that I couldn't see the bottom and I was so far down that I couldn't see the top. There was only darkness. Afraid to move, trembling and unable to get my breath, I was so scared and I was crying out to you.

You heard me. Suddenly you were there next to me. You had your arm around me and I cried harder and harder. You asked me if I wanted you to help me climb out but I was paralysed with fear and there was no way that I could step off the ledge to try to climb. You offered to carry me out on your back and  I nodded tearfully. You helped me climb on, and although I was scared I didn't feel as if I'd fall. In no time we were out into the sunlight and we collapsed onto the grass at the top of the mineshaft. 

We were on a cliff top. The grass was soft and green. Behind us were cornfields behind a wooden fence, and fifty yards in front of us the cliff edge and below us a wide sandy beach and the sea. The sky was vast and blue, the sun shining, a few white clouds dotted about and the odd seagull swooping.  A huge wonderful landscape, wide and sweeping.  

We sat by the mouth of the mineshaft. I took deep breaths. I felt safer but I didn't want to move in case I fell in. You saw my unease and so you filled in the hole. Just like that. Immediately grass began to grow over the new earth. You asked me if I wanted to stand on top but I said no. I didn't trust the new ground. It might give way and swallow me. I might find myself back on that ledge in the darkness. 

You got to your feet and you walked onto the new grass. You turned to me and stood with your arms wide as if to say, 'Look!' A gentle breeze was blowing and it blew your hair and your clothes. You looked strong and sure. You stamped a couple of times to demonstrate how firm the ground was, and then you began to dance. Faster; you danced a comical little jig with a big grin on your face. You made me laugh. You invited me to dance with you but I shook my head. I was happy to sit on the soft grass leaning back on my elbow and watch you, dancing in the sun. You asked me why not and I looked away, 'I'm too clumsy to dance.'

You stepped over to me and held out your hands. I hesitated. You took my hands in yours and pulled me to my feet. You drew me gently towards you and we danced. With my cheek on your shoulder, we danced. Slowly swaying on the miraculous new ground with the sea beyond and the sun above, we danced. 

After a while we sat down again and you told me I was precious. You had a present for me. From nowhere you produced a big bunch of beautiful flowers. Red and orange and yellow blooms, vivid and jewel-like, with lush green foliage, you handed them to me with a smile. 

Incredulous, I looked at you questioningly, 'What is this?' 

You said, 'The Holy Spirit. A gift. For you.'

Later you were looking for someone. She was hiding in the cornfield, crouched deep behind the long stalks waving in the wind on the other side of the fence from the grass where we were sitting. You knew where she was straight away and you went over and leaned your arms on the fence, looking down at her. She was crying. She had tried to hide from you because she was Unworthy. Your face was kind; gentle and patient. You asked her if she wanted a cuddle and she nodded yes through her tears.

Effortlessly you leaned over the fence and picked her up under her arms and lifted her out of the cornfield into your arms. She was just a child. She clung to you and cried and cried. You wrapped your arms around her, laid your cheek against her head and rocked her gently from side to side. After a while you pulled away so that you could see her face and you asked if there was anyone else with her. She pointed behind her and there, still in the field was a toddler, scarcely old enough to stand alone, wailing piteously with both arms outstretched to be carried. She was Lonely. 

You cuddled them both. You were kneeling on one knee and they were clinging to you and crying. You smoothed their hair and whispered kindness to them.

When they were calmer you began to look for someone else. You didn't have to look for long, even though she'd tried to get away from you. Standing in the far corner of the cornfield under a huge oak tree was another child, older, maybe seven or eight. She stood with her arms folded and scowled with a sulky expression as you approached. You held out a hand but she didn't want to come with you. She was Control, and she wanted to stay that way. You talked softly with her and eventually, reluctantly, she followed you. As you turned to leave you looked up into the wide limbs of the tree and saw another little girl sitting on a branch. Her name was Grief. She stared at you silently with big, tear-filled eyes. You opened your arms and she slipped easily off the branch into them.  She put her arms around your neck. 

You walked down the path at the side of the cornfield away from the oak tree and towards the cliff path and the grass again. You were carrying the youngest child and leading the other three. You were gentle and loving and so kind. I watched from the edge of the grass, leaning on the fence, my back to the cornfield and the sun warm on my face. 

You walked to the edge of the cliff and you knelt down and spoke to them. Three of the little girls responded to you immediately and lifted their arms to be picked up but the older girl turned round and looked at me. She didn't want to go. The others did. One by one you picked them up in your arms and threw them high into the air; Grief, Lonely, Unworthy. Each one became a beautiful white bird that fluttered high above before catching a thermal and rising higher and higher into the blue sky. Last of all you turned to the older child, Control. She looked up at you, then pleadingly at me, and when I didn't respond, she turned and met your gaze and slowly lifted her arms. You threw her upwards and she too, soared away. 

You turned back to me. We stood, you and I, looking at each other. Me, leaning against the cornfield fence, the wood warm on the small of my back, you at the edge of the cliff, silhouetted by the sun, the sea stretching behind you to the horizon. You were smiling, with your head on one side. You lifted your arms until they were stretched wide.

This is our place. A place where I can breathe deeply, where the air is pure and sweet. A place where I can find you and you seem always to be waiting for me when I go there. I feel light and happy and free. 

It is my spacious place. 

'When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord;

He brought me into a spacious place.'

Psalm 118:5

'He brought me out into a spacious place;

He rescued me because he delighted in me.'

Psalm 18:19

Light at the end of the tunnel

Well, Lord, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and although I know that you were fully aware of it, this has come as a bit of a surprise to me, to be honest. I know that tunnels usually have light at the end of them, but this one has been unlike any other tunnel that I've been in. It's been darker and more unfamiliar and frightening than anything I've known before. The last few days have been dark indeed, and for a few days there I couldn't see even a speck of light in the distance.

Turns out the tunnel had a bend in it. The other side was there, and closer than I thought, but I just couldn't see it.

My God, what a few days it's been. I've been so down. Today I feel better; I wouldn't say I have a spring in my step, but I definitely feel a bit better. I sat here in front of my computer earlier on and suddenly thought, 'Do I feel better?'

Coffee mug halfway to my mouth, I stopped and considered it and to my surprise, it turns out that I did feel better, yes.

So what happened? (Do you want to say, or shall I?)

I've got to hand it to you; this prayer thing works. You answered my prayer and I can only thank you and thank you and thank you. I've been frightened and you came to rescue me. I was like a rabbit in the middle of a road and it felt as if I were paralysed in the face of a juggernaut coming to flatten me.

Five days ago I took hold of my life and decided that things were going to be different. I wasn't going to live in the shadow of fear and doubt and anger and dissatisfaction and half-heartedness any more. I prayed with some very patient, wise people and I committed myself to some pretty profound changes. Some of the stuff I was trying to get rid of has been troubling me since childhood, so it went pretty deep. So that was then.

The following day, as you know (because you were watching) I woke up feeling dreadful. I was so, so depressed that I felt knocked sideways and that hopeless feeling persisted for the next three days. Tearful and defeated, all the negative thoughts that I'd been trying to banish were back only much worse. Why did I think that this would work for me?  I couldn't do anything right. I was just a failure. I couldn't pray because I couldn't find any words. I didn't want to read my daily notes or look at the Bible and I very strongly didn't want to listen to the worship music in the car, which I usually find really helpful. I felt claustrophobic and panicky and I actually found it hard to breathe once or twice. And I couldn't find anything that I was capable of doing about it.

I didn't do anything at all to help myself until last night I managed to read out loud some Bible verses that I found in a book to help with exactly what I was going through. In floods of tears, again, I lay in bed and cried out to you and you heard me. I managed to pray a bit. Only a bit, but you really do take my meagre little offerings and honour them with riches, don't you, my God?

This morning it felt like dawn. I just felt lighter. Not euphoric, or ecstatic, but the misery had lifted. I feel bruised, but not mortally wounded, as I did. I feel vulnerable and a bit fragile, but not defeated. I am not defeated after all. You answered my prayer.

Whatever battle was going on in my head might not yet be over, but I know that I am on the winning team, and the darkness is receding. My Saviour came for me. I know this sounds dramatic, but it was. It is.

I don't know what it was all about. A wise friend of mine said that such an experience is like the death throes of the old ways of thinking; the negativity and fear that I'd renounced wasn't taking it lying down; the enemy wasn't going to give up easily. A tug of war was taking place and I was the poor unfortunate hosting the competition. Is that it? I still have so much to learn in this area. I feel so uncomfortable talking about it at all.

I don't think that I'm out of the woods yet; I have some pretty difficult things coming up and I don't feel particularly robust emotionally. Soon I have another appointment with Katy's consultant where we'll decide on her new treatment programme and I don't really like either of the options we're so far presented with. I need to be strong because if I feel like this I think I might cry on the nice man who's only trying to help us. I am stronger than I was a few days ago. What an eternity has happened for me in the last few days.

I don't want to go through that again.

The thing is, I have had a glimpse of something. If anything positive can come out of the awful way I've been feeling since last week (other than the obvious), it's that I've had a chance to see how appalling it must be to wake up every morning feeling this way, with no end in sight. Once I had spoken to someone who had done this before me, I was reassured that if I hung on in there, there was an end to it. The light at the end of the tunnel. I needed to stick it out. But what if there is no light? What if there's only unrelieved misery as far as the eye can see?

I had a chance to taste the darkness of depression. After my children came, both times I think I probably had mild post natal depression; the sort of tearful, exhausted, despairing gloom that perhaps many new mums go through. It was horrible; I didn't enjoy it a bit, but it was nothing on the scale of this. This was bleak, and after a comparatively short while I had a glimmer of hope when I was told that it was temporary. What if someone has no such assurance?

Not knowing how far you have to travel by feeling your way before light illuminates the path again, if it ever will? Feeling blind and fumbling along. Merciful Lord Jesus, bring the people I know about who are depressed out of their dark tunnels. I understand a little bit better how they feel and it breaks my heart. No-one can see the world through someone else's eyes, or think their thoughts, or feel their emotions, but I had a try at something in the last few days that just gave me an idea of what it might be like.

You know, the sense of being cut off from you was terrible. I was casting about for help - my closest friends away on holiday, my usual props - my Bible, my daily readings, my music just didn't feel accessible to me. You were too far to see, let alone reach.  I was separated from my Father. Is that how you felt as you suffered on the cross, Lord Jesus? How much worse it must have been for you than for me. The light of my relationship with my heavenly Father is like a little candle stub at best; it burns brightly or dimly, but it's small and insignificant in comparison with the floodlit, dazzling day of your communion with your Father. And because of us, because of me, that light was extinguished for a time.

How terrible must that have been for you? I cannot imagine the sheer weight of it. All I know is that for me, it was awful. I cried, and I was afraid, and I was desperate. My God, what you did that first Easter is huge, isn't it? Bigger than my imagination.

So I'm back. And I have learned. Oh yes.

I belong to you.

Thankyou for rescuing me. I'm glad to see the light again. Do you remember that some months ago I said, 'Show me what you want from me. Make me the person you want me to be.' Of course you do. Nothing gets past you, does it?

I think I can definitely conclude that you have been working on me, aren't you? Even I can see that I am not the person I was six months ago. I said, 'Bring it on!' and you took me at my word. And, I think, so has the other guy.

So here I am, bruised and tear-stained, but not beaten, and I'll say it again:

I am your child and the devil cannot touch me.