“unless they are sent by intervention from the Most High, pay no attention to them.” - sirach 34:6
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A Beginning

by Christina Crook

Seawall, December 20, 2008 (my last walk before heading east)

The last three years have been spiritually abysmal. You may not have seen it, or maybe it was plain as day, either way I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. 

The devastated dreams of a career within the CBC coupled by my mom’s year-long graze with death by cancer spun this once confident faithful into a pit of despair. It came slowly. Unknowingly. I’ve been crawling through a long season of why-asking while my Lord’s voice, once my closest confidante, has lay dormant.

Nearly a year ago I began seeing a counselor — a lifeline in what had come to be an emotionally and spiritually void existence. I got married amidst that void and by God’s grace Michael’s and my love has grown, slowly, in spite of it.

It has, and continues to be a slow journey - a pilgrimage to wholeness. The wholeness of being. Of being daughter fully known and loved by parents fractured by painful childhoods and eventual divorce. It has been a journey restoring trust in a God I had seen as the divider and stealer of relationship, friendship and love — my ever-present scapegoat. It has been a journey to let go, to unhinge the steel doors around my heart, to name the wounds, to name the wounders and choose forgiveness, healing, hope.

Hope is my word for this year. Hope. She is a new friend. She is filled with longing and beauty. She is searcher, wonderer, and wanderer. She seeks good, and expects it. I love my new friend. I’d love for you to meet. Perhaps you know her, if so you should introduce her to a friend. 

This journey has been filled with hundreds of little breakthroughs, dozens of wrenching sobs and a handful of glimmering pictures of what is to be, what our Father intends for you, for me…

My prayer for you is that 2009 is a beginning.

4 comments

1 Jenn { 01.04.09 at 11:14 am }

C, this is beautiful. Thanks for sharing your heart.

2 Anneli { 01.04.09 at 5:13 pm }

I am excited for a new year for you, friend! Thanks for sharing. It is like that quip by a British reporter, at least on a lighter note, that “hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.”

3 Nicole { 01.08.09 at 8:13 pm }

Thank you for this post, Christina! It’s inspiring… I can just feel the newness… the “white as snow”… the “renewing as the dew every morning” overflowing out of it. :)

4 Life with Madeleine — christinacrook.com { 09.09.09 at 9:33 pm }

[...] brother James’ name. Hope is a word that has particularly captured me this year (I wrote about it here.) Also, we felt the name appropriate due to to the amount of times we had to reach out to Jesus for [...]

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