The night may close around you like a storm; yet I am the Light of the World. The skies may pour down torrents, yet my tears wash you clean; the cold wind may cut you to the marrow; yet my Word (living and active) will divide bone from marrow and penetrate your fearful heart. I will save you, keep you warm; I will dry your tears and turn your darkness into light.

Though you see Me not, I will direct your paths and comfort you with all comfort so that you may uplift the spirits of those who suffer in like manner. Child, child if you would but stop. And breathe. And just BE -- be afraid, be desolate, be hopeless, without judgment, you would know that I am here, calming your fears and giving sureness and solid, tangible hope. Please stop working so hard and, allow Me to change your heart from the inside out. "God works for those who wait for Him."

I am in the torrents; I am in the darkness, for there is no where in time and space, or even in eternity, that I am not. You may run from the darkness but you cannot escape my mercy and love poured out unto you in the deepest parts of your soul.

"For by grace you have been saved through faith;

and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God"

  (Ephesians 2:8 - emphasis mine)

I have always thought this verse was talking about the faith that God gives me to believe in him. 

My faith. 

But what if Paul is talking about God's faith? 

God's faith in me?

I believe, whether we find it here in Ephesians or not, that

Faith is not so much that 

I believe in God,

but that God believes in me.

God,

I am afraid to embrace who I have been, the worst that has happened to me and made me a part of who I am. I am running inside, from what might happen again some time, and losing touch with beauty and stillness, with my own soul.  Forgetting what I really want. Forgetting that Magic is real.

Please take me by the hand and lead me back to still waters and green pastures. Help me to accept that you turn the worst into my best ... that I might pass that on. That you stand guard at the gate to the sheepfold, rod and staff in hand.

I don't believe so much that you allowed this to happen -- filtered it through your love [is there a verse for that? I can't think of one.] Rather I  believe that you chose to walk through it with me ... all the darkness and pain ... your cloak around me keeping me warm.

Why do you, my child, extend the fruits of my Spirit to every living creature but yourself? Can you treat yourself, a being of infinite value, with

love ...
     joy ...
          peace...
               patience ...
                    kindness ...
                         goodness ...
                               ... and gentleness?

I know, you see your sins and weaknesses, you obsess on them and look at yourself through a clouded microscope.

But I do not.

I see you as you are meant to be, as I am creating you to be, as you really are (in the more true reality of eternity) clothed in white and reflecting my Light, glorious and beautiful.

Ask, seek to see yourself with my eyes. Then, and only then, will the eyes of your own soul be enlightened to see others the way they will be.