Light in the Darkness

I know, the title is so cliche; isn't it? But now looking back over the last 15 months of our lives I can see that there was Light in the deep pit of our darkness.

Our darkness is named Sexual Abuse. It's filthy and disgusting and brings me to tears just to type it. All of us have been affected by it. At the end of the long fall into the darkness we had one child in juvenille detention and all of us in desperate need of help.

I've often identified with the prophet Elijah in my Walk with the Lord.

1 Kings 17:3-5 Get away from here and trun eastward, and hide by the Brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan. And it will be that you shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. So he went and did according to the word of the LORD.

After our horrifying day and night with the local authorities I found myself sitting in my chair, numb and pondering the ravens our family needed. After all, the darkness was deep, dank and the path out that we could barely see at the time was narrow. We needed comfort, compassion, food and water. Yet, at the time, we had no home church and no real support around us.

Even given all of those circumstances, God's ravens (I now call them our angels) were coming. They were our Light in the Darkness.

The first Raven: Friends from Europe who live not far away from us now answered the phone, left church services, jumped in the car and got here to take our sweet little guy home with them for his protection. This family chatted, texted and prayed for us every day those first few horrible days when pain was so fresh.

The next Raven: homeschooling, email friends from many years ago brought us food. A huge pot of chicken soup with little oyster crackers and a salad was food for us when we could barely hold anything down. I remember Heidi coming to the house that day, looking and me, hearing our story and crying with me. What a testimony of the Savior. What tenderness she gave us. Heidi was also a provider of HELP that we needed. A good Christian Counselor and phone number to call for help.

The final Raven that was needed to prepare us for the journey ahead was my parents. It took 48 hrs for them to walk through my front door from Florida. That's when I fell on the floor, literally. There's something about a girl's Dad that just allows her to go to pieces. Grandma Pam cooked, baked, dried my tears, made coffee, cleaned up messes and ironed my son's shirt for Court. They watched the kids while we had appointments with lawyers, doctors, insurance companies, CPS social workers and police officers.

The inital few weeks passed and although very unstable on our feeble legs, we were being nourished and prepared for the long road ahead of us. I am so grateful to those that were our Light in the Darkness. Thankyou for responding to the Lord's call to provide and care for us.