Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Minute(s) (as in time) (03/03/11)
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TITLE: A moment in time! | Previous Challenge Entry
By Danielle King
03/10/11 -
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ADD TO MY FAVORITES
My desk was littered with unpaid fuel bills, bank statements and empty coffee mugs. I couldn’t concentrate, my eyes were sore from rubbing and the clock indicated that I’d wasted six hours toiling over this impossible burden. Wakening at three in the morning was becoming the norm.
“Life. It stinks!”
Whether I said it aloud I don’t recall, but the pains I felt from the cruelly knotted muscles I remember well.
I reached for the tension busters. The little white packet that warned me in red letters, ‘Do not exceed the stated dose.’ It was empty. Well why wouldn’t it be? Analgesia had been my staple diet; breakfast, lunch and supper for the last three months.
The bottle of Chilean Merlot, called me from the drawer.
“No!” I whispered. I pulled it out and ran my fingers down its sleek, tempting body. “NO!” I visualised myself popping the cork, and watching the dark crimson liquid filling my glass. “NO NO NO!” I screamed smashing it up against the wall.
I recoiled in shock at my volotile actions as the broken bottle and spilled wine splattered and stained the pale carpet. It resembled the hideous, vicious glassing attack that I’d witnessed many years before.
In a single moment I understood. The mind numbing trauma that I’d experienced that day. The horrific details I had to recount in court. The months of therapy that was intended to drag my repressed emotions from the depths of the subconscious to the clear light of day.
But none of that taught me how to forgive. I didn’t want to.
The mind is a powerful tool. It chose to push those memories back to where they had lain dormant. But my soul refused to function with this deeply hidden secret. The lightness had gone. It struggled and stumbled under the weight of its burden.
I didn’t want to forgive. I didn’t know how to forgive, but I knew that I had to. In that one momentary flash of insight I saw the answer to my turmoil.
But how?
I stood at the window and looked out at the thunderous clouds. Were they reflecting God’s anger with me? My emotions were drained and my energy spent. My mood matched the black, heavy skies. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t pray and I didn’t care. I’d given up.
I stood there in silence for hours. Nothing was important, nothing mattered. There was no time schedule. I wasn’t waiting with a purpose or intent. But still I waited.
A tiny break appeared through the grey giving the promise of a ray of late evening sunshine. A crystal clear rain drop fell from a leaf and splashed to the one below; and from a chimney top a black bird sang to stake out his territory.
Another moment. Not a moment of understanding as before; but a moment of knowing. A moment of complete abandonment of all futile human endeavour; effort, worry, bitterness, revenge, self-seeking and a hard unforgiving heart.
A moment when I couldn’t even find the strength to doubt, or the words to ask for help, He came to me in the silence and said,
“Welcome home. I’ve been waiting for you … For my grace is sufficient for you, and my strength is made perfect in weakness.”
2 Corinthians 12:9
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