It's amazing to me at times how life can seem like a sandstorm ripping through your soul. Wherever you go you seem to get lost by the specks of dirt thrown your way. You open your mouth to speak and suddenly it becomes filled with gritty garbage that you can neither chew nor swallow. The storm stongly shoves you around and by the time it is over it feels like you have been through the war of ages. You feel battered and tattered and definitely worn out and bruised. You feel like you can't even sit up let alone stand on your own. How will you find it within your desolate self to draw the strength to continue to survive.
Then, finally, at the end of this conflicting chaos, a speck of what seems like sand left in your eyes, stuck there by the tears, dissipates. There is a light, a light that glows brighter and brighter. It gives you strength. It gives you the power to choose. To choose to get up and move forward with the rest of your life. Your soul becomes whole again. Hope flows from the Heavens. What seemed impossible and never ending has indeed ended.
Grace has touched you. "It's okay, now. It's safe. You can rise and walk again." Your body, achingly rises up, slowly out of the sand dunes and ruins of what used to be. You stand. You gain your bearings, aware you are somewhere but anywhere you intended to be. You walk, tiptoeing at first, afraid that you will have to take cover. Eventually, you walk steadily, ever so often tripping over the pile of sand leftover from the storm that consumed your existence. The only difference is you trip but you are able to catch yourself now with the grace of His loving hands and unconditional love.
Your walking will one day turn into a run. Once again you will feel the wind at your back and freedom moving through your forgiven soul. Eventually, you will find your path again. The sands of time will pass. You will become a beacon of light for others who are in the midst of their own sands of time storm. The grace that had fallen onto you will pass onto another who cannot see in the moment. One who cannot speak for fear of choking. One who cannot breathe for fear of suffocating. The light you now carry inside, because of the grace given by Him, will light the path for not only for you but for those whose sandstorm of time is still a war zone. Falling all around them and ripping through their spirits as it did yours.
Like all moments in a storm, turn to them and say, "Rise and be strong. For nothing will ever keep you fallen if you ask for grace to find you. He WILL find you because He has never left you. Just ask, child, just ask."
-Penelope Jean
Penelope Jean is a special education teacher in upstate New York. She is a single mother of a 6 year old daughter. Her book, HOLDING GRACE, is in the process of being published by American Publishing Company.