- Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...
Thanks so much for joining us for Wednesday’s Word and Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power! I just love knowing we have this time to share revelations from the Word with the heart and prayer of them coming to life in your life! Grab your coffee and your Strand of Faith and join me for a little break.
A couple of weeks ago I began committing to memory a scripture I came across while doing my current Bible study. It’s found in a book I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never read, but reading this verse has definitely piqued my interest and I will make it a point to study this entire book after I finish my current one. Anyway, it’s found in Habakkuk 3:19 and says “The Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like deer’s feet; He makes me walk on my high hills.”
Isn’t that a cool but peculiar scripture? I mean, why would we want deer’s feet? Oh, there is so much symbolism here in these words, and, no, I’m not insinuating that we are by any stretch of the imagination like a deer, but this is a beautiful analogy God paints for us. Have you ever watched a deer walk, or run for that matter, especially uphill? Oh, my goodness, the first word that comes to mind is grace! Seriously, they are such beautiful and graceful animals.
Now let me share some of my real-life drama with you and then bring it home to your heart. Come with me into one of the toughest nights I’ve endured in a long time.
I woke up with a jolt groggy from too many sleepless nights in Texas, the allergy capital of the U.S.! And yet, I was wide awake, all my senses on alert. I looked at the clock and groaned. Nooooo, not again! What hit my internal panic button this time? My nose was fairly clear, thanks to my nose drops, which I hated taking but finally was forced to just a few hours prior. My tongue felt as thick as peanut butter, almost as though it were swollen. I grabbed a vitamin C from my nightstand, thinking that would help, determined to hunker back down in the warm covers to keep myself protected from the freezing wind tunnel in our room from the air conditioner. :-) I like to sleep warm in a cold room but that is mostly because of the stuffy nose issue that I’ve had for some time now.
The vitamin C didn’t work. I had already taken an anti-anxiety pill before falling asleep just three hours prior so I couldn’t take another one. I threw the covers back, got up, went into the bathroom, took a tinkle and headed back to bed determined to sleep. Normal breathing wouldn’t come. I began to rub my feet together, faster and faster, my anxiety increasing. It was getting more and more difficult to take a breath in normally. My thoughts went to some emotionally painful places and thrust me back out of bed again.
A reminder of my ENT doctor’s diagnosis put my panic on steroids. I replayed one of his statements over and over, unable to push the pause button: You either have surgery now or I’ll see you when you have no other choice but to let me operate on you because you can’t breathe out of your nose! Oh, my good God! Is that what was beginning to happen? Was my nose beginning to close?
These crazy thoughts began to run through my head so fast they were pushing panic to an ultimate new level.
My sweet husband lay undisturbed by my tossing and turning, snoring the minutes now turned hours away. It felt like it was getting more and more difficult to swallow. By now, I was in a full-blown panic attack, getting up, going back to bed, getting back up, checking the thermostat and making sure my husband hadn’t changed it from freezing…no, it was still on 69, which considering the weather in Texas at that time – it didn’t’ get higher than 42 most of the time – should have felt warm.
I thought about getting up and reading…but I didn’t want to wake him up; after all, he couldn’t do anything and often says he feels helpless when these attacks hit. So I kept it to myself and I lost count of how many times I got up and came back to bed, walking around like a freaking zombie, frustrated as all get-out, feeling utterly terrorized as my thoughts went to getting on a plane the next night to come home. What in the world was I going to do? I couldn’t risk rupturing my eardrum(s)! And what if this happened on the three-hour plane ride home? How would I even make it home alive?
This went on for FIVE hours! I was so incredibly frustrated but even more terrorized as I realized that this was happening more and more frequently. The million dollar question that plagued me the entire panic attack: is this allergy-related or yet another sinus attack/infection? See, I hate not being able to breathe out of my nose. It’s something I have struggled greatly with and the older I get the worse it gets. I have traced my terror to several childhood occurrences where I woke up to someone smashing a pillow in my face trying to smother me…in the name of fun! And no I don’t stay stuck in the past but this is where that body memory comes from.
I lay there, frozen in my thoughts in my freezing room and suddenly it hit me: the thought of waking up with my nose packed not only terrorizes me but…it’s my HIGH HILL! Silence! I literally almost stopped breathing!
This verse began to rise above my terror and in the quiet of the night it spoke louder than the panic. What if I had to have the surgery? Is this my high hill, I reasoned with myself? For months I’ve begged God to heal my sinuses and even argued that I didn’t want to have a surgery only to discover this was all allergy-related, so why have it? On the other side is what little common sense I have which reasoned that it still would bring some improvement…but would it be worth it? Could I wake up with my nose packed and not have a heart attack?
My breathing began to not feel so labored and I begged God to please intervene divinely and let me sleep; I just couldn’t take any more.
I woke up with a start, again…and I had slept three hours!
I can’t say that the panic has completely dissipated and disappeared; but I can say that if this is a hill I need to climb, my God will give me feet like a deer’s and He will help me walk that hill with grace, protecting me from all of the harm I’ve imagined would/could come my way as a result of this terrorizing surgery which includes a complete remodel of my nose! He says on one side I have a master bedroom and the other, well…not much! :-)
So what’s your high hill? Is it a financial mountain? A hurting marriage or love relationship? Are you trying to parent a troubled child who is troubling your heart? Are you caring for an aging parent? Oh, Coffee Hour friend, let’s trust Him together to make good on His promise, to strengthen us and give us feet like deer’s feet, to walk our high hill together, with grace! His promises never come back void!
Join me next week with another powerful word in this saga! Oh, and by the way, my plane ride home was uneventful…I only panicked a little, even when I heard it was going to take longer to get there because of weather!
Love,
Evinda
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