Angel Varney
Point The Way
The weekend had been a nice and long one with three days full of good times and laughter and void of a schedule.
It was a holiday, the first one of the school year to be exact. Time was spent backyard barbecuing, dipping in the pool and watching fireworks at night. For a while mom even got to sit at the waters edge and chat with friends while the littles swam, splashed and dove to their hearts content.
So when Tuesday morning came and those littles of mine had been dropped off at school I pulled into a parking spot, cracked the windows open and turned the ignition off to breathe and reminisce for a bit.
(Please tell me that I'm not the only one who finds her vehicle a good place to pray, read, answer emails and just find five minutes of refuge some days.)
My five minutes turned to fifteen before I realized it and I quickly got out and hurried to rush inside.
But before I even reached the front door I saw her struggling there and knew that I wouldn't be making it to the morning exercise class that I had intended to go to. The Lord had other plans.
She was wearing a look I'd now recognize anywhere. The look resembles a deer in the headlights kind of fear mixed with a bit of blankness that comes from depression.
She looked so very tired.
She was me.
Five years prior I had walked that lonely road called depression and by the grace of God I'd vowed after coming out of it to reach out to whomever I met struggling with the same foe.
She has big dark eyes and as I looked into them and saw my reflection it was suddenly me standing at the kitchen sink, or the checkout line, or by my car at any given place on any given day. The heaviness can sweep over you in an instant anywhere or anytime and make you feel as if a cloud the size of Texas has settled over your life.
I shook my own shoulders knowing all too well that my light needed to invade this darkness settling over my friend.
"Here, let me help you," I offered. I reached for something she was trying to carry and she burst into tears and fell into my arms.
That's how you know that you are one step closer to real help and freedom from this beast. When you can feel the brokenness and let the river of tears flow freely then your heart is good and ready for a revival of sorts instead of hardened and calloused to the pain.
I stood there and listened. I let her cry. I said not a word as she told me how angry she was at the disappointment her life had become. I rubbed the back of her head like she was my five year old child and listened some more.
If there's one thing I've learned through the years about an encounter of this type, it's that people often avoid helping or reaching out because they are afraid they won't know what to say.
The beautiful truth of it all is that transformation takes place not so much in what you say-but how well you listen to others that God puts in your path.
When she was finished talking we prayed together and I shared with her a bit of my story, because although I might not be able to fix what is wrong in her life, I can point the way to the One who fixed mine.
John has always been my favorite of the Gospels and I particularly love how in the opening verses of the fist chapter John the Baptist is described as a witness of the Light.
Not to be confused with THE LIGHT, he was just a good teacher of the way to the One who could set men free from darkness.
We were never meant to walk this path of Christianity alone. When we open ourselves up to testify and share with someone who is experiencing a pain that we too have experienced before?
It’s like turning a big chandelier on inside of an old musty cave. Light expels darkness every single time.