Safe and Sound

I hope you like the music playing on my blog right now. It's one of my favorite songs ever. (If it's not playing, scroll down a bit and place your cursor over the Sonific piano symbol on the right side of my blog).

It's called The Prayer.

I pray you'll be our eyes, and watch us where we go.
And help us to be wise in times when we don't know
Let this be our prayer, when we lose our way
Lead us to the place, guide us with your grace
To a place where we'll be safe....

Let this be our prayer, just like every child...
Needs to find a place, guide us with your grace
Give us faith so we'll be safe.

Everybody wants to be safe- in this world. Probably one of the first thoughts on my mind as I go to sleep is: "Is everybody safe?"- meaning, are we okay? Are we in danger- emotionally, spiritually, or physically? Are we "on track" for a healthy, whole life? Are we okay?"

It is rather sad to see a grown woman, like me, walking around desperately seeking security. (Not to mention occasionally walking around in broad day light with pajama bottoms and hair a mess- but you've already heard that account of me!)

I suppose my panic over being lost has to do with the fact that my parents left me when I was a three year old, and I was placed on an Auction block and auctioned off. Seriously. But don’t be alarmed, this wasn’t some foreign country and my parents weren’t evil- just forgetful.

I was left at an auction my family attended, my Dad thinking my mom had me, and my mom thinking my grandmother had me, and …well you get the point- I was left behind. My parents realizing this truth rushed back into the civic building where the Auction was taking place, and there I was, on the Auction block, the auctioneer jokingly asking “What am I bid for this here little girl?”

I like to think it would have gone into the millions, but I’ll never know because my parents walked back in, in the middle of the first bid, and reclaimed their child, only after a head count revealed child #4 was missing. (They never would have lost #5, my little sister Susan, because she was cute, I angrily asserted later).

Now add this traumatic experience to my other traumatic experiences and what do you get? A grown woman afraid of being lost or left behind. A grown woman who yearns to feel safe.

Yet, the only safe place is the place of Faith. Not blind faith. Not that phrase that people say, off handedly, "oh, just have faith", as if it was no trifling matter to have faith.

Faith is a gutsy conviction of the unseen hand of God on you, the call of God to you, and the way of God- through storms and raging rivers and circumstances that make you think you could never make it...without God. Faith believes God IS, and that God is looking for your faith to arise, and that He will be pleased when it does. (Hebrews 11) And it's rising up in me.

Faith. "...The evidence of things not seen,"... YET- I add. Because those who wait on the Lord not only renew their strength, they also renew their perspective of where they are, who they are, when Christ lives in them:

they are safe and sound.