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I have not always known, Jesus but He has always known me. Through Him I was knit together in my mother's womb and in Him, I am held together. Jesus has held me together, and continues to hold me, in the face of much uncertainty. All of our lives are lived in uncertainty. However, I have been given to face the reality of that uncertainty every day as I have never been a healthy person. I have been made ever mindful of the shadow of death that hangs over me.

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I was born too soon and too small. A few days home from the hospital, my parents found me unconscious and not breathing. God through them, miraculously, revived me. I couldn't use my arms and was unable to catch myself when I fell and as a result, didn't walk until I was three. My mom trained me to use my arms by teaching me to pull up on a broom handle. I finally learned to walk only to be struck down by scarlet fever. I was not taken to the doctor soon enough and became too weak to walk. After spending a year in recovery, I had to learn to walk again. I was not well enough to start school until I was seven. However, I was so small that I was often mistaken for a four-year-old. I missed more school than I attended and being in bed is my most familiar childhood memory.

My parents drank heavily and I don't ever remember not knowing the taste of alcohol. It was the governing force in our household and when I was sick, I was treated with alcohol. I grew up under substance abuse and I too adopted that way of living. However,in my time, there began to be many more substances readily available for abuse. I whole heartedly availed myself of them. I was confused by life and angry. Raised in a house of rebellion, I became ferociously rebellious and set my feet firmly on the road of self-destruction.

At fifteen, I was a run-away, throw-away child. I was looked after by those who could profit from my childish gullibility. Treated like garbage, I became garbage, and regarded myself as garbage. My only relief was the euphoria of drugs that for brief periods of time deadened that in me that continually ached to know love. I came of age, fully like those who had trained me. I was completely hardened with a heart and mind set only upon evil and the fulfilling of my craving for sin. I, at eighteen, was far past any hope of reformation.

At nineteen, I came fully to my end. Years of drug abuse and the life that goes with it had reduced me to near nothing. I was sick and weighed only 75 pounds. I was loved by no one and loved no one in return. I believed love to be an illusion and longed to be swallowed by that shadow of death that has always hung over me. In fact, my life was nothing but a celebration of death. A continual ring-around-the-rosie that left me with nothing but a pocket full of ashes. I saw nothing for myself that was desirable or obtainable and longed only to become those ashes. I did, by the power of my drugs, descend into death and was briefly swallowed there. I was revived and was so filled with despair that I cried tears of remorse when I awakened again to a world with no love. The few moments of my death were but total darkness and nothingness and I preferred that to the pain that I knew as life.

I didn't know to look for Jesus. I didn't know Him or know much about Him. I know now that what I was longing for was Him. There were times in the midst of my merciless existence, that He called to me but I was not ready to hear or to see. It was when I had been fully humbled and brought completely low by my personal tribulation that Jesus opened my eyes and ears to Him and called me out of that tribulation. Though I was long past any hope of reformation, I was not beyond the hope of regeneration through the power of the Mercy of God in Jesus. Jesus, filled with compassion, reached down to me as a young woman, destroyed from without and from within, and enabled me to reach back to Him. All that was good in me had died and the void left behind was filled with Jesus. Being that there was so little left of me left much room for Him. The gaping chasm within me was filled to overflowing with His Love. I was filled with the Love that is Life and all that had once been good in me as child, was quickened as I began to regenerate and become the person God intended me to be. I was reborn.

God has left me a thorn in my flesh that is a reminder of the life of death that I led before Him. As a result, I have never known what it is like to be truly, physically healthy. He has left that weakness in me to keep me ever mindful of that which is the fullness of my own way without Him. It is the struggle with my health that keeps me ever dependent on Him. It is through sickness that He makes time for me to listen to no one but Him. It is through sickness that God has built His Compassion and Mercy in me that I might know the fullness of that which He extended to me. He has given me to know somewhat, of the suffering of Jesus and the capacity to understand the suffering of others. It is in sickness that God has bestowed His greatest blessings for by it, I decrease and in me, He increases. The weaker I become, the stronger He is in me. The depths of my weakness only makes room for the height of His Power and Strength.

My life now, by human standards, is quite uncertain. I don't know how long the Father will choose to leave me here with my family and friends. Physically, I have become more limited than I sometimes can bear. I don't want to face the pain ahead of me that seems certain and though I don't want to leave those here that I love, I also don't want to be a burden. I want always to be useful and there is in me a great longing to be fully enveloped in Christ and to put off completely this body of death. The death that I once longed for the fullness of, I now know to be but a shadow. This shadow that has ever held me within its merciless grip will not only lose its grip on me but by the Power of God's Mercy in Christ, oneday consume itself and hold no one anymore. The shadow is losing its power over me as I pass into the fullness of Light and Life. Though I am uncertain of my future, I rest in His certainty. I am happy and blessed. My heart overflows with His Joy. God has given me wonderful things amid this life of pain and even the pain is a blessing for He is faithful to work it for my good.

The Power of God's Mercy that is Jesus the Christ, that has been poured out on me, fully without merit, is open to all. For as I am being fully restored to my Father, so is this same Power of God's Mercy at work in the world (a world fully in the grip of sin, its sickness, and death) that all may be restored to Him. As I pass from that which is mortal (that life that is limited by death) to that which is immortal,( life made limitless by He Who is Life)so shall all that is mortal and visible one day, pass into Life as all things are gathered together in Christ. Death is the temporary state, merely a passing shadow, made strong by man's fear. Do not fear! It is the Mercy of God that is bestowed in the person of Jesus that strips death of that which gives it its strength. Perfect Love castes out all fear and God is Love. True Love is self-existent as God is self-existent and God loves you simply because you are. Look to Jesus, accept His Mercy, know His Love. All who look to Jesus, will learn by His perfect Love not to fear death and death will be made powerless. Look to Jesus and Live!