Between Yesterday and Today

This is a poem I wrote about 6 months after coming out of the psychosis:

Six months ago I was struggling to stay awake, struggling to find joy, struggling to make sense of all that happened in December.  I was moving to a new place, leaving behind my family and friends, my support group, my entire life as I had known it.  Before the craziness I was excited.  After the craziness I was fearful, sad, and anxious.  I couldn’t drive.  I couldn’t be on my own.  There were times when I wondered why I was still here.  I was such a burden to everyone around me.  But God.  Those words have such promise.  All throughout scripture there is sin, toil, idolatry, evil…But God chose us.  But God sent His Son.  But God has a plan of redemption.  Even in the very beginning when God is cursing the snake, the woman, the man, the very universe because of sin, there is still grace.  The man and woman didn’t die.  He had a plan even then.  And He had a plan for December and for the last six months of my life.

Here I was in a strange city, surrounded by strange people, and yet God had not left us alone.  We had a church to go to right away.  Although it wasn’t “home”, at least we knew it could one day be home. (Today it is the home and family we knew it would be...so thankful for GBC!!!!)  And in a “strange set of circumstances” the Leija’s had moved here and were 20 minutes closer.  What grace poured out from heaven above!  Meredith and I could do breakfast on Friday’s—I remember telling her I felt like I was in a pit and she grabbed my hand and pretended to pull me out.  What grace!

Between Yesterday and Today

Yesterday I was fearful,

Today, I’m trusting.

Yesterday I was lonely,

Today, I’m grateful.

Yesterday I was discontent,

Today, I’m joyful.

Yesterday, I was wondering where my joy had gone?

What happened to me?

Yesterday, I looked at others not able to see grace, not able to see the

joy of the Lord,

And wondered why they couldn’t see?  Why they didn’t just “be happy” that God had saved them and take His promises to heart?

Today I’m full of God’s joy and delight in the Lord. 

I can look back and see His grace through that dreadful, dark trial.

I see His hand carrying us through, placing people in our lives at just the right time.

Encouraging when I needed it, but letting me see that it wasn’t ME that was able to see His hand, it wasn’t in MY nature to “be happy” that God has saved me—it is a gift from His hand. 

A gift that he holds—that He gives and at times takes away…only to give back a hundredfold,

Enlightened with compassion for others that wasn’t there before.

A new understanding of darkness.  A new understanding of fear.

A new way to see that the “Christian clichés” don’t just “work”.

A new hunger for God’s Word—not just to learn one more thing,

But to meet and commune with the God that has saved my soul.

With the Spirit that saved my life in more ways than one.

With the Jesus who died for ME that I might be with Him.

That I would persevere through that dark time

And come to this side of the valley,

Looking down, looking back,

Lost in wonder, love and praise,

At all that God has done between yesterday and today. 

Rachelle Thomas