The Narrow Path

An Introduction

When God tells you that the first half of your life is all about building your character. When what the world tells you are supposed to be the best years of your life…suck! Trial after trial. Pain after pain. Heart-wrenching, bewildered reality with no natural hope….Well, for me, that is the narrow path. “Do not be surprised by your present suffering as if something strange is happening to you, for God disciplines everyone He calls a son (or daughter).”

I was in college when my “furnace”/Job experience began. After a semester of some of the most excruciating torture, God told me and my prayer partner simultaneously that what I had just experienced was only the smallest, most minute fraction of what was ahead….NOT what a young woman in her early 20s exactly wants to hear!! But He is my God, where else could I go? What else could I do but keep surrendering my everything to Him?

These are the messy poems, written along the way. What I have learned: The inward journey to the center of your heart covers some pretty treacherous ground, but there is nothing more satisfying, more beautiful, more intimate than coming up against your own bankruptcy — all the desperate places that scream obscenities at God — surrendering it all and crying out for help: “I am utterly screwed if You are not real!”

It changes you. His presence comforts and molds you. THIS is working out your salvation with fear and trembling. And this salvation is all about being loved, being cared for, being crafted into a masterful piece of art that gets to partner with God to love and bless others along their own magnificent journeys…Wow!