Light After Darkness

The light is a lot brighter after the darkness.  At the end of  November, it felt like the sun started shining again with crazy intensity.  Maybe not so much that the sun was shining, but that the Son was shining.  It was on November 30th that hurts fell away in the biggest way since the divorce.  I have had many conversations with God over the years, but I will never forget the one I had with Him that morning.  I don't want to share the details, but it was powerful, eye opening, and gave me a new perspective and a new hope.  It also began a deep work of forgiveness.  Even with the work begun, there was still chains of unforgiveness wrapped around places of my soul.  Hurts that I held onto, despite my renewed hope, bound me in that place.  Last week, on January 22nd, there was a break in those chains.  I'm not saying that the hurt is healed, and that I will never again feel the sting of the way my heart was broken, but here's what I gained--a new way of looking at the people who have hurt me.  You see, I saw them as human, not as a tool for pain, but as a human beings with hurts, brokenness, dreams, desires, hopes--just like I have.  When I began praying--for both of them, together,  out-loud, it was as if the chains fell away.  I can't describe it other than to say there was even more freedom than what I originally experienced back in November.  I don't know where life and love will take me, but I know that the Son is bright and the darkness only helped to make it so.  I am grateful for the darkness, because in it, I found a renewed relationship with The Light.  I am also excited about the next chapter.  I know God is furiously writing it out, and He will reveal it in His perfect time.  I pray for patience in the waiting, and that I will never rush the tapestry He is weaving in me.