One of my favorite scriptures from the Psalms over the last 10 years has been one that states, “If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.” Psalms 139:8 I clung to this verse for years as I endured a hell of my own making. It gave me hope that even though I deserved my situation to an extent and definitely had no one else to blame but myself, my own choices, and my own actions…even though I had chosen the path that led me to hell and then made my own bed there, God wasn’t sitting back saying, “You made your bed, now you lie in it.” He was saying to me, “You brought yourself here, but I will still never desert you…Peace, be still, I am here.”
This faith and hope gave me the ability to look for God, for joy, in the little things. During the worst times when I found myself completely surrounded by fear, anger, confusion, hate, loneliness, and all sorts of other negative emotions and people I discovered small gifts of freedom, pleasure,and joy from God. These I relished and treasured.
One of those little gifts was Blue Bell Rainbow Freeze popsicles. For several years, when I had little in the way of special treats or pleasures, once every week and a half or so I could get one of these tasty treats. They brought back the emotional freedom of a wild and free child running through the front yard with popsicle juice streaming from hand to elbow and dripping onto whatever happened to be under that elbow. They were a taste of fruit that I could not have, both physically and mentally.
There are not many things I treasure from that time period in my life, but the Rainbow Freeze is one of them. During my morning meditation today, as I ate my first of these popsicles since the end of 2008, I am reminded of a loving and faithful God who carried me through the harvest of a crop I never should have sown. While the just nature of my Creator did not allow me to escape the consequences of my actions, the merciful nature that tempers His justice kept me from going through it alone. Despite that I deserved no mercy, grace, or relief from a God I had thumbed my nose at and turned my back on, He gave it. He kept me safe, carried me through, and provided me with enough little pleasures scattered over the years to give me the strength to endure, to keep running the race.
Today I will use this memory and affirmation to remind myself that I have many blessings in my life, and that the little blessings, the tiny joys that let me slip totally into the now and bring relief from the negative circumstances surrounding me or reinforce the positive situations, these are gifts of God. Those little escapes give me the strength to keep trudging the path and not look for total escape in the oblivion of drugs or alcohol. My hiding place is in God and the gifts of love, joy, and peace He gives…both great and small.
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