Lord, the week has just barely started, but I am in desperate need of YOU.

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March was a trying and difficult month for me. Between the humbling effects of having foot surgery and coping with decreased mobility to confronting emotional hurts that had lived inside of me for decades on end. I’ll be honest, if not for the love and support of my Love and a few close people, I don’t know how I would have made it to today.

Yet on this Monday of Holy Week, I find myself calling out to God, asking for just a little more of Him in order for me to make it through this week.

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I feel like my 30+ years of belief in Jesus have led up to this week. My mother’s eldest daughter is in town visiting and my mother still seems immune to/blinded by her deception and destruction. Both of my sister’s previous visits in the last seven years have led to horrible fractures in the family that continue to worsen today. And each time the crack spreads, I feel a weight of Christian guilt because somehow it is always my fault.

Maybe I didn’t pray enough/hard enough.
I should forgive and excuse manipulative behavior.
She’s family; you have to love family.

The guilt that rises within me is palpable at times, consuming and suffocating me in a way that I cannot begin to describe. And on top of that, my mother’s refusal to see what others can plainly see about her child only further hurts me and makes me feel emotionally, as I felt physically some 30 years ago at the hands of my brother. Yes, I am saying that the emotional and mental pain that my eldest sister has caused me, is equivalent to the physical and sexual abuse that I endured at the hands of my brother for two years.

However, it is not lost upon me that this time she is visiting during Holy Week. Honestly, I feel like God has a sense of humor and is choosing right now to let it loose. Holy Week, a time when Christians should be more keenly and intently listening to God and reflecting on the ultimate sacrifice that He made for His children, this is the time when I feel like decades of my family’s pain will erupt into its swan song, either permanently healing or destroying my family.

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Beloved, this is the week of miracles and blessings galore! This is not prophetic speaking, but instead Biblical confirmation. Even in the ugliness of Jesus’ death on the Cross, the blessing was that His act saved us from sin AND reunited us with the Father. The miracle is that Jesus rose on the third day, forever claiming victory over death or any other force of destruction in this world. If that’s what happened Biblically and our God is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore, then I know miracles and blessings exist right now… even in the midst of some undesirable situations.

Please, continue to keep me and my family in your prayers. Currently, I’m praying over the Word that God has given me to share this Good Friday. It’s actually my favorite of the Seven Last Sayings on the Cross because it speaks to reconciliation. It is funny because despite all of the pain that I have experienced in my short 37 and a half years on this earth, I still believe in God’s healing and restorative powers. Furthermore, if there was ever a time for God to do the impossible in our lives, this is the week for it to occur.

Be blessed.