Back from the Abyss

It is has been so long since I've sat at this keyboard, staring at this familiar screen:  March 10th--over three weeks ago!  There are reasons.  And there are reasons why I've come back...  Thanks to two friends who called to encourage me to press on and keep writing!  Stay posted my friend, and I will explain it all!  But for now...

Have you ever been so discouraged, so drained, that you have no mental or emotional energy to create?  To communicate?  To pour yourself out?  Sometimes, no energy to go on?  That's where I was for the first week of this "three-week sabbatical."  I still claimed something each day, though the claims were small, but had no energy to tell the world, and little energy to keep trying to choose happiness.  Instead of typing the details to you, I typed a short note into my cell phone so I remembered what I did each day, knowing that eventually I would return to you, to this, to the task at hand.  And here I am... 

...to tell you what I've learned.
And to tell you "don't give up."
Here I am to say to you, dear reader,
there is a purpose in the suffering.
There is a hope to bring us through.
There is Jesus in it all.
He is all.  He fills all.
He is ALL in ALL.