Holding On

There are some days when I L-O-V-E technology.
Yes, this afternoon is one of those times.
I get to kill a few minutes on the way home from work sitting in a coffee shop downtown, watching kids play tag just outside the window as the water feature behind them plays hide and seek with whomever chooses to walk past it.

And writing this first blog to have been posted in a few months.
On my phone.

Yeah.
I'm still looking for words to describe the pace of the last three months.
I can give you the bullet points, sure.
That's easy.

I went to Kenya.
I came back from Kenya.
My father nearly died of a heart attack.
My newest nephew was born.
My brother-in-law rolled my sister's car avoiding a deer.
And my aunt nearly died from pneumonia.

It's a lot.
A LOT a lot.

Understandably, I've felt an entire roller coaster ride's worth of emotions.
Trying to write more than the bullet points has been tricky because nothing I've tried to write recently has come together in a way that makes sense.
Wednesday night, before services started, I shut myself into my classroom and tried for the hundredth time.
By the time I finished, I was crying and reading it and realizing...
This belongs in a private journal.
Not on the internet.

So I didn't publish it, even though it makes some sense.

What it, and all of the other writing I've managed recently, has done is help me come back to a place of peace.
Getting all of the questions and doubts and fears out of my head made room for clearer thinking.
It brought me back to a remembrance of the promises God has made.

Crap is going to happen.
He's not going to stop it, but He is with me as I'm going through it.
I just went through Psalm 23 a couple of weeks ago with my youth, and one portion has been lingering with me in particular for this season.

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil, for You are with me."

I'm holding onto the promise within that for all I'm worth.
As I sit in this coffee shop, writing this blog, on my phone, I'm holding on.