But the way of the wicked will perish....
Those words from Psalm one reverberate throughout my entire being and sink in deep, the truths within them are restated throughout scripture. I landed on "No evil dwells with you," in Psalm 5. They remind me of the days when I was first saved and I would drink in the words of Christ when He spoke that He tells us the truth. I had been lied to so often that to read words such as let all men lie but God be true saturated my soul with goodness and filled out my heart with strength.
Today I read, "But the way of the wicked will perish," the last words of Psalm 1. What hit me so deeply was that it is a promise! A promise that we will not contend with evil forever.
What a refreshing drink to those who are desperately thirsty in a dry and weary land where there is no water! We will not contend with evil forever..
No evil dwells with our God!
That our God tells us the truth.. that no evil dwells with Him.. what wonderful truths that under gird and stabilize us in a world that is often all too out of control.
I was often too out of control.
I remember what it felt like laying on my mother's side of the bed. I had tried to go out with her and my nana, my mother's mother, but the effects of what I had done were beginning to take their toll. We were all going to go join my aunt and her new baby for a day of shopping, except I had swallowed a bottle of Tylenol and nausea was setting in.
I was returned to the house and my mother's car pulled back out of the drive way. My secret hidden inside my heart and my life felt like it was ebbing away. I had climbed up the staircase and had chosen my parent's bedroom over my own. Wondering if I chose my own room would I even ever be found? Knowing that at least if I laid down for the last time upon my mother's side of the bed that when she retired for the evening my body would be there.. cold.
At thirteen I thought I was pregnant.
At thirteen there was no truth in my life and at thirteen there had been relations with those with whom such relations should never have happened. I felt like the blight upon an otherwise perfect family.
The perfect all american family in the suburbs that had it all.
Including the black sheep.
Which was me.
I was about to ruin the entire family because while I could lie and avoid the realities no one wanted to see, if I was pregnant all would be found out and I would be the destruction of said family.
Enter bottle of Tylenol. For evil had entered a long time before.
I think back to that day.. that afternoon... In those moments there was nothing that would say to hold onto hope.. there was no hope. Or at least I thought that to be true. IN those moments there was nothing to say that there was a truth, a way, a hope.. In those moments there was nothing to say that life would get better and that darkness wouldn't win... There was just darkness.
But even that is a lie... there wasn't just darkness...
A relative that lived in the same town would happen to call at the same time that I felt my life slipping away. I laid there and heard the phone ring from a far off distant place. I was somewhere. I was floating. I was distant. I was slipping. The phone rang. The phone rang again and again and again.
I don't remember picking up the phone but I remember hearing the voice on the other end, there was a level of concern within the tones that sounded so very unfamiliar. Questions were being asked such as where was my mother, and how was I... I don't really remember the answers I gave to her but something alerted her enough that her promise to me was that she would call back and check up on me often.
I wonder about the unseen battle that afternoon. Again and again I would feel myself slipping away, sinking into the bed, floating away from the room.. and each time, each time the coldness would lay its way upon me, the phone would ring. Each time I would be wooed away from the hold of the valley of the shadow of death and each time I would hear that voice, full of concern.
Darkness and the wicked and evil will perish.. they will fade away... We will not contend with evil forever... I am so glad I didn't die at thirteen. It would come about that I wasn't pregnant either.. So much would come about... The nautical term of coming about.. a changing of direction, to shift to a new tack... a fresh wind would change the course of the direction of my life.
It would be five more years before I would meet my savior.. and life would get darker at times before it would burst forth with light... But that is the beauty of light.. It is insistent and it does get its way. For a light has dawned upon a people who were walking in the land full of death.. upon those in the land of death shade a light has shown forth... I didn't die at thirteen ... I have lived .. I have lived and awoken and am alive to speak forth that which the Lord has done...
I will not die, but live, And tell of the works of the LORD. Psalm 118:17 NASB
The people who are walking in darkness Have seen a great light, Dwellers in a land of death-shade, Light hath shone upon them. Isaiah 9:2 Young's literal translation
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