One Twinkling Star
February 25^th, 2022 

I climb.  Very determinedly I climb up the rugged, rocky mountain of life. A couple times, I nearly gave up.  Not a favorite topic to talk about.  But it’s very real, and many make the grim decision to take that route out of despair. 

Climbers, let me encourage you urgently, don’t take tragically desperate measures to barricade you from finishing the journey according to God’s plan.  He believed you were up for it when He created you.  He believes in you now. 

Years ago – many years ago – I was saving up bottles of prescription medication to put myself permanently to sleep.  I felt like an absolute disaster as a single parent.  Moreover, a handful of individuals made that same judgement about me – would almost gladly have poured the pills down my throat to hurry the process along.  I even went to one church for help and was icily told my “sniveling tears” didn’t mean anything.  I only share that to say one can survive anything, no matter how hopeless.  Oddly enough, it was a Catholic nun who sat on my hospital bed day after day and talked to me about God’s love who gave me back my ticket to health.  (I am not Catholic.)  Don’t get me wrong, my mental health was not restored overnight.  Nor was she the only person who assisted me along the path to recovery.  But she was a key player who shaped my concept of how God works.  And who illustrated for me how very much He intends that we should indeed finish our experience of life successfully, and on a happy note. 

I wasn’t even going to write on this topic at all.   But this week has been a very difficult one for me – and for my husband, Eric, too.  And it is the people we could open up honestly to who have helped us most on our road through hard places to get back to a place of safety and security.  If for any reason you find yourself facing a sense of futility, put away any thoughts of using a weapon of self-destruction and look to your Maker to arrange a better path for you – or even for a weary fellow traveler.  The sun will rise again just over the horizon.  Joy will return with the morning’s light.  In the meantime, focus on whatever little star twinkles in your night sky, however unreachable it may seem at the time.