Of swords and melodramas and dark places in the night...

Awakened by a dream. One word in a dream. Like someone snapping their fingers rousing me from a hypnotic trance...I am wide awake at 2:30 in the morning. Upon rising I find that all is not in order. Someone is not in their place. A mother's worst fear compounded by the fact that this mother is now to be a grandmother and it seems that all senses are heightened in a way unexplainable.

No one tells you it will be like this. That all the love you have for your own children will be magnified in the next generation of those born of your blood.

And no one tells you that this love must dwell in some horrible gray area known only to grandparents.We have no power. Like we ever had any before. We have no say so. We have no control. And we are counseled to keep our mouths closed. To let ours raise their own.

The thought tumbling around in the outer reaches of my mind is that all of the lessons I have come through in the past few years, the ones stripping me of all control, were wrought in preparation for this very specific time in my life. The time when I will truly have no control. When all I will be able to do is stand quietly, waiting to be called into action when needed...and pray.

As I lay me down to sleep, my heartbeat calmed somewhat by a few brief,quiet words...for it seems the molding and shaping has replaced much of my volume with more peaceful tones...my thoughts are not those of "what if", but of praise...scripture strung together and set to a tune sung by a long forgotten voice from my teenage years...

"LORD, our Lord,how majestic is your name in all the earth...Our Lord, we praise your name, Our Lord, we magnify your name, Prince of Peace, mighty God our lord God almighty"

And then prayers sent forth asking our Heavenly Father that I be of use. That I be useful... to HIM.

On the one hand I rejoice that in the dark places, forged by the enemy on a cold winter's night, MY spirit instinctively cries out to the spirit of my Father. On the other, my flesh is once again angry at what little control I have over my own life.

My only TRUE control in the past has been the volume of my voice, or the panic of my heart, or the "what if" centered melodrama playing in my head like a flickering piece of old film at it's tamest or a technicolor masterpiece in it's full glory. And..my flesh finds it hard to put these old friends to rest.

But the spirit of the Lord reminds me that it is okay, proper, preferable even, to put away the "Peter's sword" of my youth...the sword drawn in haste and in panic...and dress myself in a mantle of peace stitched by my Father's own hand and blessed by the blood of his son.

I pray that in the future, when I am once again set in that place of "no control", I will remember to draw this mantle over myself as a child does with a blanket, that it become the tent of meeting for my father and I... and that in this tent I find rest.