Desperation...

So often driven by desperation...desperate to solve problems, desperate to heal wounds not inflicted by us, desperate to find love mirrored back as intense, as large and all encompassing as our own.

They...they are driven desperately by desperation and need...desperate to fill the giant black hole inside their own hearts, minds, spirits...desperate to find warmth to fill and heat the cold recesses and folds of an empty black heart, coloured in just that way from the harm they do others in their wretched attempts to consume all qualities they lack.

Like Bram Stokers Dracula, they search out their victims to drain them dry, to suck all the good, the beauty, the courage, the strength from them by osmosis...soaking it in, and caring not as they trample upon, cheat on, betray in the continued search for more, for the extra sideline adoration and attention.

With each stroke of the brush, victims fall..dried to a withered husk of their former selves.

Desperation...that black hole shifts, it expands and threatens the world they know...threatens to expose who they truly are, to turn the mirror around and show the horror they have become.

Desperation...we seek unceasingly for answers, for solutions, for more love, more forgiveness, for truth...for each time we seek we suffer...we are beaten down once again, into the dirt, into the dust, into the filth they live in.

Dear treasures...dear lost ones...the change will never come from your person...they are enmeshed in a cycle started long before they reached teenage years...honed over those formative, focal, important years into what you are experiencing today. To give up on those skills honed in the midst of tremendous trauma (unless they are psychopaths, born this way) would mean facing years, and years, and eons of gathering, traumatizing, discarding, and deceit. To face such, in their eyes, would mean a loss of self, a loss of who they believe they are. In their eyes this foretells certain destruction...in our eyes it means destruction of evil and an acceptance of humility and grace. Of vulnerability...of intimacy...

Fighting words in the mind of the abuser, of the monster at work. Laughable to them, really.

We know not of what we speak...we are stupid, delusional, crazy, difficult, emotional, needy...

Right....

Dear friends...live for this moment...we do not get very many in this lifetime, on this planet we call home. It is fleeting, momentary, a blink of the eye. With death striking close to the heart these past months I have a new appreciation for life...courting death personally was the norm...but those in the mix know, life is not so much appreciated as it is survived, head down, breath shallow, steps as light as possible, words soft and easy, so as not to awaken the beast.

Free...yes free my friends...life outside of captivity, of the prison bars and walls invisible to the naked eye...every little thing is a wonder...the tiny birds alighting and flying as I walk on my property...the blue blue blue sky without a cloud to mar the canvas that meets the eye...the laugh of a baby in the line ahead...the road stretching out ahead of me as I make my way on another road trip. Wondrous beauty as far as the eye can see, as far as the heart can stretch and inhale goodness and light...

No matter the sorrow...no matter the days of grief...the light of love, of nature and all its beauty outshines all else...the love of family, the acceptance and grace fills the soul to bursting, obliterating the dark places and spaces.

I sit in thankfulness...in gratitude for all that I have, for all the dreams and goals that are coming to light, to fruition...

God is good my friends...doubt not. I have seen it, witnessed it, lived it.

Stand on His promises, stand on His word...'You are fearfully and wonderfully made.'

Walk in it...stand in it....proud, tall, face lifted, shoulders back with confidence, with pride, with knowledge of worth and all that is good, lovely, merciful and gracious.