Some days fear wells up in me from some deep place. It is quiet in its approach. I don’t realize it has come to visit me until it has crept in through the back door and taken a seat right there in my kitchen. Whispering in my ear. Telling me the saddest stories and the most insidious lies.

I will start feeling vaguely sad. And isolated. And slowly I realize it is because I am listening to this ongoing, monotonous voice that tells me really mean secrets about myself. Secrets everyone else knows already. Secrets about how foolish I am… what people really think about me – or worse, that they don’t think of me at all. I have no talent. I really have no worth. I am mean-spirited. Everything I think about myself is just a delusion, a lie, a big puff of smoke. And mirrors.

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I have had a new revelation this morning. Deep in the beautiful truths of ‘Good, Good Father’ and ‘Is He Worthy?’ sung by Chris Tomlin – those beautiful words washing over me, soothing me as my morning begins, I make a new decision. Michael needs to hear those words, those truths.

Michael is beyond my reach. Locked in a broken mind and a tormented spirit; at the unkind mercy of a broken justice system and sentenced to a life behind bars and in the company of felons. Because Michael is a felon himself.

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It all started in a grave… and a borrowed one at that. Usually, it was the women who bathed the lifeless body, rubbed the skin with rich perfumes and lovingly, carefully wrapped their loved one in strips of linen.

This grave was different. It held a king. A king from a foreign land. Messengers from that foreign land, angels, watched silently from the shadows. All was quiet. They had no songs to sing, no words to say as they watched the two men at their work.

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My sister had a recurring dream in the months before she passed away. She told me about it one day as I sat on the edge of her hospital bed. In her dream, she climbed a long staircase; at the top was a locked door. She tried the door, but it would not open.

I think I shared with her the verse from the Revelation to John; that we are the ones who open the door. Our conversation went no deeper at the time. This recurring dream of hers continued and expanded and there came a time when she opened that door.

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I was ill-prepared when I set out on this little journey. The sun was high in the sky, the air crisp and warm with a slight breeze. At the end of the trail there are waterfalls, clearly marked with an orange star. But I will not make it there. My hiking boots are safe and sound on the other side of the continent in the dark of my closet, as I slip and slide in my black Adidas on the hard-packed snow and ice that carpets the trail.

I will make do with a large granite rock and the babble of the brook intermixed with the occasional car on the road that runs parallel.

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Have you ever found yourself saying no to God? I have. And let me tell you right now; it is the wrong side of the argument to be on.

 I have led an amazing Bible Study for the last 17 years and I started out on that path, at the very beginning with those words of ‘no’ in all their variations choo-choo-ing in my brain like a little toy train going around and around. “No, no. no.”

 God was pretty gentle with me, and patient, putting the bible story about the 10 spies who said no to him outside of the Promised Land into my head, (if you don’t know the story – look it up – it is pretty terrifying!).

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Sunday night, in Colorado Springs, I sat outside by a blazing fire with strangers and watched the gloriously white full moon turn the color of a blood orange in a total eclipse. It was amazing and beautiful – but it could not compare with the total eclipse of the sun on August 21, 2017. It is one thing for the moon to have its light from the sun blocked but to watch the light of the sun disappear is a whole different thing.

Did you see it? Do you remember the slight chill in the air? Travel back with me to that week of the sun going dark – I am glad I wrote about it then.

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We are all standing together in a big hole. It is deep, with slick steep sides. We can look up and see light – the blue sky above us – brilliant and sparkling. But when we look down, obscured by shadows, our eyes gradually adjust and we begin to see the ground moving beneath our feet.

 It is mud; sandy and thick and wet. It is much too soft to find a solid foothold. We shift our weight, and it fills in around our ankles. Quicksand; the stuff of Tarzan movies.

 It holds tightly to our ankles, gradually creeping up to encircle our calves. We lift our knees high, trying to step above the thick bone-cold mud that holds us in its grasp. We look at each other; we are in trouble.

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I was afraid that it would never be that good again.

 You know the feeling. That giddy feeling of happiness. Your heart beating a little faster when you were in his presence. The time of intimacy spent alone… just talking…and just hearing his voice. The comfort of being able to pour your heart out when the world stopped on its axis and started turning the wrong way around.

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Dare I write of a manger and a virgin giving birth? How do you possibly put pen to paper about such things?

Angels have sung songs about it; shepherds have crowded into a dark and foul shelter to see a newborn in his mother’s arms. The planets shifted in their orbit to send one star closer and brighter than all the rest. Stargazers charted their course and Herod slept fitfully in his bed unaware that a new king had come to town.

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