Women’s Group

Last night I had a Women’s Group meeting at Challenge House 7.  These were women from the Canton Pike Neighborhood that needed to sing their life songs of perceived hurt, hopelessness, and worthlessness.  What transpired was the knitting together of friendships that allowed for the singing of life songs that truly inspired and assisted each group member.  The sharing of pain and hurt truly blessed my understandings of how and why the Challenge House is so important to the neighborhoods that they serve, and to their ability to knit together people in the neighborhoods to help and minister to each other.

A  LIFE’S SONG OF REDEMPTION

We all need friends who lasso hope when we hurt and discover purpose in the pain of our life’s song.

Mrs. Katye is that kind of friend to me.

She is the woman who inspires me to live fully awake and to refuse to sleep-walk through this short life of mine.

She encourages me to laugh more, believe more, hug people more, and chase more wildly after Jesus.

Mrs. Katye is a beautiful GODLY woman, 98 years young, singing her own beautiful life’s song.

But Mrs. Katye is always there to hear the life songs of those that need prayer,

That need REDEMPTION.

Like me, in this life, I am sure you long to know that your life challenges truly matter.

You long to know that the grit and grind, the scraping and juggling, the yes and no of managing life’s daily grind is for something greater than yourself.

You long to know that your struggle through the dark times, the losses, the abandonments, the tedium, and the sorrows is for a larger purpose.

And though sometimes you might want to tuck away that pearl of wisdom, that hard diamond of truth, that precious jewel of understanding that represents your struggle for inner beauty from the ashes of your painful circumstances, your life’s song needs to be sung, to be shared, to be prayed over.

And though sometimes you might want to run away from your life’s memories because you still dread the darkness of pain, and to remember may hurt terribly, you are no longer where you once were.

You climbed your way out of that hurt, that dark place.

You rejected the lies that told you positive change is not possible.

You walked that journey through the painful dark that nearly broke the very spirit of you.

That place, that hardship — you know the one I mean — it needs to be shared with someone.

That is what Mrs. Katye did for me.

She listened hard, she hugged hard, and she prayed hard – for me, for my life’s song that I shared with her.

She did not cast my treasured words of pain willy-nilly for the world to pick apart.

She offered my pain up to Jesus in many, many prayers.

She needed to hear my life’s song to minister to my soul.

Only you will know exactly who to sing your life’s song to,

Someone needs to hear your darkest memories; someone needs to pray hope for you.

Hopes exist even in the middle of the churning storms of your darkest days.

GOD’S SHINING LIGHT extends into EVERY painful dark corner of life.

Sound the trumpet of your life’s song,

Composed through hot tears and angry screams and silent confusion,

I need to hear the song sung between you and God

GOD, who can truly make beauty from disaster,

GOD, who can provide safety for the lonely, the hurting, the hopeless

GOD, who creates strength from the struggle of life.

We are created for REDEMPTION,

ALL OF US.

Sing your song of a messy life being made into a REDEEMED TREASURE.

I want to hear your life’s song.

All OF IT.

I am praying for you.

Come and share your struggle for REDEMPTION song.