echoes of now.

My thoughts feel stiff, like the tin man standing in the rain for far too long. They do not come easy as they once did....and there is pain with each word typed. Gone is the girl who once wrote so many things, whose thoughts were fluent and easy as breathing. Here sits the woman the girl lost herself in...changed. Oh, but beyond the pain, beyond the hurt, beyond that moment when you lose and believe that breathing is too hard, beyond this place is one far better. Sitting here now looking back on all, it is a beautiful, incredible, wonderful thing to see with perfect clarity. And in the clarity, in the unveiling of all that once was, all you thought you wanted, you realize it was just a stepping stone and that here and now, you are right where you are supposed to be. For Jesus has stolen my heart away, He is all I've ever wanted, and to sit in this moment and gaze into His radiant face, this is all I'll ever need.

He has taken time past and like a healing balm, spread a love throughout my soul that I never knew before...could not have known if not for the long stretch in between then and now. What joy there is to be found in this, that He allowed the river to rush in like a raging beast, to sweep me up, carrying me into depths that I never imagined possible, and like a jagged, ugly rock, good for nothing other than to look ugly, His waters tossed and turned, pulling down and then pushing up again until the rough edges are smoother now than before. And the soul in this woman is not what it was when it went into the water. For all of this, for every moment the current ran too fast, for every second that was too painful to breathe, for all the hours when tears fell, filling the river's waters even more, for all this I lift my hands to the heavens and with the honesty that only such an experience can bring, I cry out praise to the One who allows that which we think is too much to mold us into all that He would have us be...

And these are the echoes that come back into this moment, these are the lessons learned. For Jesus can redeem ALL that has EVER happened in our lives and He can turn it for His glory. He is faithful, faithful to ask us to give up what we thought was the best so that He may replace it with something that is incredible beyond all we could ever have dreamed...

© Jade Valcarcel 2012. All rights reserved