Words striking a memory.

In reading the Word today, I both read something completely new (Ezekiel, which I began yesterday) and something that was both familiar and meaningful, because I remember it being a verse I once greatly needed.

It's no secret that I've had a difficult relationship with my parents. This is nothing new, and I daresay that it's more complicated than most parent/child relationships, which all generally have some degree of "issues."

My parents, though, have brought some of the greatest struggles to my life. I don't know that they mean to do so, and for years I've tried to figure out why. Why are they so insistent upon having their way, even now, that I am an adult? In cleaning out my emails the other day, I came across hundreds from my mother - persistent with tasks that I had to complete - concluding that I *had* to move down there so they could help me more.

Ironic, isn't it, that they are now not speaking to me - imagine if I had rearranged my life against my own will to move down there. I'd be living in an area with less support than I have up here.

Anyway, the complications and hurt of that relationship has had two effects upon my relationship with God. First and foremost, it's caused me to seek Him more earnestly, to be more cognizant of my need for Him and His *truly unconditional* love, even when I had no model of that type of love in my life.

However, it's also caused me to struggle with the image of God as Father. I don't have a difficult relationship with my father except that he usually follows the will of my mother - he has traditionally been the peacekeeper between us.

I think about all of this now because I read Psalm 27 today - familiar words - "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" (Words I probably should have relied on a bit more last night, laying awake petrified in my own house.)

But I'd forgotten this verse - "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me."

And then I remembered reading that for the first time.

I think I was maybe a freshman in college - but I was home for a break or something. We'd had yet another fight, and I was devastated, tired, sobbing. I had to run some sort of errand, and instead, I went to my church.

The pastor came out of his office and talked to me in the hallway, but he was a new pastor that I didn't know well, and I didn't want to talk, to be counseled.

I just wanted a respite - a sojourn away from the complications and the pain that didn't seem like they would ever end.

I went into the sanctuary, sobbing before God, asking Him when it would get easier - when I'd be allowed to be me - why my parents hated me so. I found a Bible and prayed before opening it that God would use His Words to speak to me.

I know people say the Bible is just a book by men, that it is not truly God's Words, but that will never explain how I could have immediately opened to that verse. There was no searching for it. It was just there.

"When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me."

And He always has. Always.

It hasn't always been easy, but that' s not God's promise. Not much comes easily to the people in the Bible. God promises that His yoke is easy, His burden is light (Matthew 11:30). Sometimes, it seems so much harder because we make it hard. We *choose* to worry. It's funny thinking about it that way - that worry is a choice we make, a sign that our faith that God will take care of us is a weak faith.

Funny, too, to realize that a struggle of almost ten years ago is still one that I have today.