Coming down off the ledge!

Today, I am so cranky you should be glad you're reading this blog from a distance. : ) After another sleepless night and a day filled with Realtors dragging strangers through my house, I felt like I was 'on the edge'. And then, this image appeared in my mind, a famous painting I remember seeing as a little girl. It didn't mean much to me then, "oh, the poor little lamb must have been so afraid." Now, it means something quite different. I didn't know back then that one day, I would feel like that little lamb, alone on the edge of a great precipice, waiting for my Shepherd to grab hold and pluck me from the waiting arms of sorrow and self-pity and unbearable sadness. And as I type these words I realize why my Father brought this picture to mind. He wanted to remind me that I am not on that ledge; that the day Jesus died, He scooped me up and held me in His arms and I have never been out of his sight again. I 'was' lost, but I am found. I can choose to never wander from His loving gaze and watchful care again. I don't have to return to that ledge over and over again, as the evil one would have me do. He would like for me to feel that I am always lost and out of sight of The Shepherd. What a lie. And so, I will instead graze along the 'still waters' and 'lie down in green pastures' and find restoration for my weary soul. And I will not go back out on that ledge. And I am not cranky anymore!