Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons[/caption]“Caroline” was part of a group of Catholics I was part of, seeking to grow in their prayer lives by tackling issues in their past which prevented surrender to God and intimacy with the Holy Spirit. We all sat in utter silence, riveted as she told the story of how God intervened in her life.
After a grueling nursing shift,
Caroline sat alone, slumped, at the kitchen table.
Head bowed down, resting on her arms
with a glass of cold beer beside her.
Just like the other night and the night before that.
She was all alone as usual.
She suffered through a traumatic childhood,
her husband dead after eight years of wedded torment,
Caroline was
alone.
Shattered.
Too exhausted now to carry out any nefarious plans she had concocted to end her own life.
Depressed, empty, seemingly devoid of hope
at a dead end of nothingness.
Yet, a tiny flicker appeared, a flame of inspiration birthed in a crucible of despair.
A thought rose up, swelling until all other notions were pushed aside,
A thought of surrendering everything to God,
her past, present, and future with plans, hopes, desires, and disappointments.
Even more, Caroline offered her identity, her very core self.
Suddenly she grew warm, pleasantly warm,
felt an actual physical heat on her arms, back.
Raising her head, she was startled to see a beam of light focused just around where she sat
and the room ... the room looked different, brighter, as if a veil lifted off her eyes.
Then Caroline smiled,
sensing words within her heart,
strange words:
“Live in the Light. Seek the Truth.”
She glanced at the ever-present beer.
Did those words have something to do with that glass of beer?
What if, just for tonight, she didn’t drink that beer or the next one after that?
Was that part of living in the light?
Caroline smiled,
dumped the glass of beer in the sink and
miraculously fell asleep, into a deep, restful sleep,
a sleep that was the beginning of a new way of living.
“Live in the Light. Seek the Truth.”
It became her mantra, guiding her like a beacon for years to come.
Two simple sentences.
“Live in the Light. Seek the Truth.”
Copyright 2019 Melanie Jean Juneau
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