pause

This is not meant to be an indulgence in self-pity or bitterness, only honest questions and reflections that I'm likely to lose if they aren't written down.
At this moment (I will speak for no other) I am well. Hope is within reach, even close. It is certainly real. More to the point, it is mine. It was meant for me, and it was meant by Someone Who is as willing as He is able to give it to me.
I don't want to squander this, for I know that trials and attacks are ahead, and I do not trust myself to prevail against them. I will, however, trust God to walk me through them. I want to learn and imprint the truth that now seems every bit as huge and all-infusing as it truly is, but which I have all too often lost my grip on. I don't ever want it too seem like the mockery I have been guilty of reckoning it to be in my forays into death. I know He has forgiven and restored me, and will continue as often as needed to see me through to the end of the war. That does not diminish my yearning to stand fast and overcome so He won't have those things to forgive me of again.
I am grateful beyond words for the people He has brought me to. I had no idea this could be real, even less of an idea that it could include me. How did I ever make it this far without them or others like them? Why do they endure me like they do? The things I have invested in them seem so trivial and superfluous compared to what they have lavished on me, the places in their lives and hearts they have freely let me into, the seasons they have shared with me. They are beautiful, and I want that beauty to envelop and define me, to not merely tolerate my admiration from a distance but to invite me to become a part of them, and they a part of me. I want to live forever in the knowledge that they are the gloves on God's hands with which He touches me in this life.
I need them, and at this moment I can allow myself to know and accept that. How could I refuse such a staggering, ever-renewing gift?
I need them because I love them. I need them because they are where I want to be. I need them because I fear the pain that lies ahead. I don't know why; I should be used to it by now, and that's not a self-indulgent whine but puzzlement as to why I can still be so easily set back by adversity.
I don't want to be capable of losing the knowledge that I am just now daring to reach out and caress. I don't want it to be lost in the enemy's smoke-and-mirror show that God has never once failed to expose for the sham that it is.
I haven't been taken out yet. God has borne too monstrous a cost for my redemption to leave my fate in my own hands. I feel the fear, but I will not let it chase me away from Him or the future and hope He has for me.