Gut Level Honest

There are times when life is just flat out hard.
When God does not answer. In fact, it feels like He left the room.
And there's an empty space. No amount of weeping and begging will change it.

I have prayed for some things for years. Good things. For my family. And God has delayed. And I do not know why. And to be real with you, I am weary in the wait. I am tired.

Last Tuesday night I went into prison as I always do. Convinced I could just hide behind the preacher who was bringing the monthly service, I felt no pressure to come up with a message. I was in such a state of mind that I would have rather stayed home parked on the couch.

You can imagine my suprise when the pastor left early in the service to go to a funeral and the Chaplain looked at me. She simply gave me the "bring the invitation" look. I wanted to bolt out the doors. I was in no position to stand infront of the inmates. I was simply a diminished beacon of light. And the light was flickering.

I hesitated. She continued with her expression and I aproached the microphone.

And in the following moments, I was gut level honest with those 350 inmates. My faith was weak. I was weary in the battle because it appeared to have no end in sight. God had heard my pleading and was unresponsive. And I felt only anger at the thought of Him waiting to move. In the middle of my honest exchange, an amazing thing happened. The Spirit moved in my weakness. Thirty women came forward because they too were in a battle and felt hopeless. Powerful!

After the large service, our choir had time to go into the chapel and meet for 45 minutes. I began to look in their faces and share with them the heart of my struggles. They listened. You could have heard a pin drop in the room. I trust these girls with my pain. I tell them things I would never share in the free world. With the exception of a select few in my accountability circle. But my circle is huge in prison.

Within a few moments, sixty female inmates - my sisters and friends - surrounded me. They wept for me. The laid hands on me. They prayed beautiful Scripture over my mind and my family. I cried from a deep place and without fear, for in prison with my girls I am home. God's presence is welcoming there.

I walked out of that prison with a heart overflowing with thankfulness to God.

There are times when it just hurts so much to follow Him. When we long for the pressure to ease up. For the lesson to be over and recess to start. But we do not know the plan He is completing IN US so that others might KNOW HIM.

What I can tell you straight up is this - when we pour out into the lives of others from the well of our relationship with God, there will come a day when those precious people will pour themselves over us. And it will cool the heat of our pain. It will drench us in a love that knows no limits and draw us back to the One who is waiting to walk with us through the pain.

I am the most blessed woman in the world to have my wonderful sisters to walk with me, too!