The Bridge to Healing

Image by R.J. Hembree

used with permission

Psalm 27:7,9-10 (NIV)

Hear my voice when I call, O LORD; be merciful to me and answer me. ... Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior. Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.

The Bridge to Healing

I look toward the end of the bridge and am shaken. I fear heights and have been over bridges like this in the past only to be shaken by a mean brother who loved seeing fear take hold of me and watching me cower on my knees, afraid to venture to the other side. When faced with a challenge, as a child, I often cowered, trying to wear a brave face.  When bullies attacked or when shame surrounded me like a little girl standing in the center of a cornfield, I would panic, shake, then drop to my knees, or run for my life.

I learned the hard way that you can't run forever and you also can't run over the bridge, unless you're a fearless soul. I'm not fearless, I'm human. I see this long bridge as a path to healing, fear on either side, but the beauty that lay up ahead when healing is complete. My journey with this disease began in confidence, fear was far from me as I started the trek across the sturdy wooden bridge. Then it hit me almost a year into my confident walk, I looked down instead of ahead, midway across the bridge.

I looked forward, I looked behind me, I was shaken and stirred as if someone was with me on the bridge trying to throw me from the path that I was on. My hair swirled around me as I kept looking back and forth, confidence stored in the clouds, fear in the rushing waters below. I was frozen. Mid-December I became less and less confident, my pain rose, my ability to focus waned. Surrounded by positive and negative vibrations, all meshed together and I was cowering in the center of the bridge, halfway to my destination. How could this happen, how could I lose the very confidence I started over the bridge with, what happened?

I know what happened; every pain, every lump and bump were echoing sounds from below in the rushing river. I looked over the edge and it crumbled me as it had in the past. I was staring death straight in the face, in my mind. I couldn't let go, no one was there to save me. No one was there to rebuild my confidence. Prayers continued for me but I felt that they were too far away for me in the trembling of my knees.

Then I remembered the clouds; the clouds that lined the end of the bridge, that feathered over the sky as protection from the baking sun. What I was seeking was not below in rushing waters, in echoing fears, in rocky mountains, what I was after was the healing that only my God above could restore. A month, two months passed and I was growing weary just crumbled in the middle of the bridge, I needed to rise and peer at the sky and remember the reason all of this took place to begin with. 

Someone walked onto the bridge in a tip-toe fashion and handed me a cane then went on to the other side where they stood motioning me forward. Me, I was slowly rebuilding confidence, my pain was easing, my knees more steady as I stood and began to take a step toward the end of the bridge. I was powering onto the finish line where friends were now cheering me on. The fog had lifted and I could see their faces at the end of the bridge. Looking around was no longer scary, it was becoming a part of the journey, it was fine tuning my eye to the promise of healing.

The cane slowly slipped from my hands as I was no longer in need of the crutch. The worn wood no longer held slivers of fear between them, they held solidarity in my foothold. The end looked like the promise I was guaranteed by the Lord Himself. The sky held beauty and with each step, I went forward to the healing that all were anticipating.

Moral of the story: Don't let fear stop you from moving ahead in your journey. Don't let the vibration pull of positivity and negativity own you and blanket you in fear. Grab hold of the reins of confidence and drown out the rushing waters below; listen to the sounds hidden in the clouds that only a fined tuned eye can see and ears can hear.

Ez. 12:2 “Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house.”

The Flood Waters

Pss. 32: 6 For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him.

During the ‘no internet’, the isolation and reflection period, the floodwaters were coming downstream. Yes, the Colorado flood waters.

I live about nine miles out from the Platte River, and all this summer the dryness took it’s toll; grass and weeds were filling the sand where there once was a river flowing. From all angles the riverbed was dry as a bone give or take a vein of water here and there, until recently that is.

Riding over the small bridges that spanned the river, our mouths just hung open in awe of the isolated trickle of water that came through disguised as a river. Before the internet cut off I was watching the Colorado flood waters daily on this here web center. The devastation, the beating of water on houses and cars, and knowing, this will all come our way. Maybe not in the essence that it struck Colorado, but it would move east downstream and wind up in the Platte River.

Adam came home from school last week and had said something about his teacher talking about how dangerous the Platte River was at this time. Toxic material was moving its way through and the river was more like a cesspool of refuse. “Do not go in or near the river and definitely do not touch.” he said!

We shrugged it off in disbelief, but by Friday evening I heard for myself on the news (yeah, no internet caused me to actually watch the news on TV) that the Platte was at flood level and Kearney was under a flood watch. The river cuts right through Kearney.

Sure enough, Sundays church visit (we cross the river) showed us the rushing of water downstream! The river was full, full of sludge and overflowed into nearby lake houses. Just as it sounds the houses have a lake in front of them where people in the houses have little paddle boats and whatnot and actually use the lake. I imagine with the overflow of the Platte into their lake, tests will need to be run on the water to see if it is safe to return to the lake as a playing field.

As I saw the water reaching back into a cornfield, I thought of the cows being let out onto the field and thinking the water was safe, but is it, even for pasture cows? I have no idea; I’m not a farm girl, I’m just a city gal making observations.

What was so weird about the observation was it made me think of Noah and last weeks posts. Yeah, I’m still in my reflecting mode and when these things strike me, I write.

The flood of thoughts washed over me, like I imagine Noah being flooded and asked to prepare for a new world. That’s exactly what I was doing, being flooded and told to prepare. No I don’t believe dinosaurs were on the ark, just as I don’t believe polar bears and penguins were asked to leave the arctic to come on down to climb on board the Ark and the flooding of the land.

When disaster strikes we’re asked to prepare well ahead of time, some do and some choose not to. I know losing the internet is no disaster, far from it, but it does cause a flood of emotion to wash over you causing you time to take a dip in the reflecting pool. I wasn’t prepared to be ‘cut off’ from the internet and that is why I had such a sadness when the thought of non-communication struck me like a sudden onslaught of flood waters.

The thought of not reading my online friends for days was like a sand bur hindering my movement. Although my last post before the interruption of service happened, I had said I was going to retreat, meaning a step back to me, but to them, my three day absence was me retreating, a staying away intentionally. Well EGADS! An intentional staying away of my only friends in life? Why I never!

So I’m back with a flood of messages. Not necessarily ‘writing’ posts, but messages of loving and passion! Writing IS my passion and I love my friends. They are a flood of comfort to my isolated soul!

Pss. 69: 2 I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.