Slaying Dragons

Husband comes softly, tiptoeing through the dark. Through early morning's incoherency, I hear him approaching, long before he reaches my bedside, with hand's gentle, rolling touch.

 

It's time to wake up honey.....
 
Eyes stay shut, as I pull bedclothes tighter, wrapping into a cocoon of warmth against the cold and the pull of the dark...I hear children's raised voices and I groan inwardly...

Are they up and fighting again already?

There isn't enough of me and what there is of me seems impotent, and I'm groping for grace. It's easy to forget the truth in the dark. Sadness of new day wrings bones dry.

To be so defeated before day's beginning.....
Lord Jesus ~ Grant me Grace....

Week's candles smolder cold...

As I wake in the dim of the winter solstice. I don't feel the light. Skin crawls with the darkness. Like Mary, I am living advent, aching for the birth....

Mary travailed as her hour came, experiencing the ebb and flow of terrible, contractions. She nurtured the child in her womb for close to nine months, has sacrificed, has loved and  awaited the coming of world's Hope. She knew that what was emerging was a result of love, a gift from God, becoming life eternal. As she neared the time to giving birth, her pains become stronger, more intense, and longer in duration. She screams, she weeps, she writhes in pain, until that tiny babe finally rests in her waiting arms, revealing fulfillment. Intake of breath...all is not over for Mary. The serpent is poised to devour her newborn...

The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.
                                             ~Revelation 12:4,5

Truly Mary suffered far more than any woman on earth.

Mary (the Woman) flees to the desert. Yet the woman's real protector is God, who had prepared the desert as her place of refuge on earth (Rev. 6, 14). In vain the dragon endeavors to destroy her,

...so he takes his war to her offspring.

We are her offspring...

I am the bride, the chosen. This travail must be experienced, this war must be fought, and realization must sink in, permeating every part of me even in this desert, that God will open the earth to swallow what threatens.

Never fear shadows.They simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby.            

      ~Ruth Renkel                                             

Christmas asks nothing of us but embrace. Lay down the expectations, the efforts, the perfectionism and performance.

Simply wait for His coming...

The Incarnation of the Son of God united earth to heaven. His blood has done all the work. He shed it to release us from burden -- making possible Advent of  Love, Joy, and Hope for Peace


Slowly bedclothing is tossed aside, I rise taking deep breath.

The Light has come into the world...

He's asking me to grasp the Light and take it out into the Dark.

... those who follow the true way come to the light, and it shows that the things they do were done through God.

                                        ~John 3:18-21

There is nothing to fear, for the Light illuminates that all the good being done in the dark chaos of a day is done through God, that He carries, that He sustains, that He conquers.



~Lord God....I simply come to your Light.

The dragon is slain...
This will be a Christmas of rest. 

May Christ's birth free you from the darkness, bringing you ever increasingly into His Light

Always Seeking Higher Ground,

Nora