Last week I shared with you some thoughts regarding loss. What was
interesting about that message, in addition to its content, was how it came
to be written.

Normally each week’s Shabbat encouragement is a result of thoughts that come
to me when I deliberately make time for HaShem. Often during jogs or walks,
times when I’m away from the madding crowd, these insights will be revealed.
I come home, write them down, and they eventually are shared with you.

Uncharacteristically, several Shabbats ago, I woke up with this sentence in
my head, “Think of the worst thing that has ever happened to you.” Well,
that was a little unsettling to say the least! I lay there and tried to go
back to sleep for awhile but more thoughts kept coming. So much so that I
actually typed them with my thumbs on my phone which was nearby, which is
not an easy thing to do! By contrast, when I usually write these weekly
encouragements, I find a quiet time soon after the jog or walk and let the
words kind of flow through typing on my laptop. The thoughts are usually
fast and I’m a fast typist so it’s a very meditative process, almost like
playing a musical instrument. By contrast, this time I was asleep and was
awakened by the words, coming fast as I painstakingly wrote them down with
my thumbs, the clumsy typing thankfully not disturbing the flow of the
thoughts. I put the writing away as I often do to send at some future point.
Over a week went by from the morning of the unusual waking words but it was
a time when I was struggling with loss myself. Several days earlier I had
experienced a total crying meltdown as I felt the pain of loss provoked by
hurtful memories. As I pulled out the “Loss” Shabbat encouragement written
over a week earlier, and the only one in queue, I felt HaShem’s presence
through Yeshua cradling me in His arms. The power of His knowing what I
would go through and creating then this message for this very moment now
brought home the profoundness of His reality. I had no idea at the time I
was writing, a time I was feeling just fine, that these insights would be so
healing to me over a week later. And judging from your many responses to
“Loss”, words ministering to many of you as well. Unlike my usual pattern of
wordsmithing and editing my earlier drafts, not a single change was needed.

What a powerful testimony to His presence in our lives, in ways and at times
we can’t even remotely understand, imagine, or engineer. His time is of a
different dimension. He knows what we will endure, even before we know it.
He is there for us then and now. He is with us. He is real.

Shabbat shalom.

Diane