Rock solid

It's easy to lose perspective when life looms enormous, pressing up against you suffocatingly, crushing you under its inexorable weight.

It's easy to be caught in depression's powerful undertow and be sucked under, never to surface again.

It's easy to feel like you're all alone in the world in the endless night, no one out there who will help you, even if they could.

I used to give in and let the darkness overtake me.

Stay away from God even though I know that prayer, talking to Him, would be my saving grace.

I use to question His existence and His omnipotence, disbelief oozing from every pore of my being.

Now I know that I had built my house on sand. My faith a frangible, brittle thing, unable to withstand any of the elements.

I succumbed to worldly distractions and settled for less. Wrestled with my demons and lost which resulted in massive amounts of self-pity and self-loathing.

So what transformed me? Perspective.

Watching my father valiantly fight a losing battle with lung cancer - a horrific, yet heart-wrenchingly beautiful spectacle.

As the disease gained control of his body, he found tremendous psychological and spiritual healing. He reverted to the faith of his childhood - rock solid was his belief in Jesus.

His faith was God's parting gift to him and it enabled him to live out his last days with such grace that it called to something deep within me.

The most precious thing my father bequeathed me was this house of faith built on rock.

And so I began to build my own house on the bedrock of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Before I placed the foundation, I had to tear down the house of lies and distortions that I had sought shelter in for over 30 years.

I had to face and slay the monsters of my childhood with the sword of Truth and reclaim the delightful, precious and beloved little girl living inside of me.

In accepting the gift of who I am, I began to build the house I was called to design with the talents I had been bestowed.

Erecting walls of love and truth, with sturdy doors of forgiveness, sparkling windows of beauty to allow the light to shine through, topped with a roof of goodness.

So when the storms of life batter the exterior of my house and rattle the windows, I am safe in the knowledge that my ever-growing faith will sustain me through the most destructive of hurricanes.

For Christ is my rock. My lodestone in life.