God’s promises – thoughts from fabs

Easter

Posted on April 1, 2018 by fabsharford

What is there to say on this day?

That the Lord is risen? He is risen indeed.

I feel it pressing in on me today, the weight of it pushing on every square inch of the skin of my soul: an awareness of the kindness of the Lord to me.

And I could fill your Instagram feed with pictures of His kindness: of the faces of faithfulness and the bountiful gifts, but it is not of these things that I speak. I speak of the pain, of the mistakes, of the failure, of the darkness. How kind He has been to me through these things.

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An end-of-the-year challenge

Posted on December 30, 2017December 30, 2017 by fabsharford

[My friends and I gave each other an assignment a few weeks ago: the task of writing a letter to a-year-younger version of ourselves, on the verge of 2017. So, below is the letter I would write to the woman who was me on December 31st, 2017. She sat at her computer, much like I do now, planning and plotting for the year to come, and these are the words I would share with her.]

Dear Fabienne,

Happy New Year! Welp. You made it through 2016!

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Good gifts that expire

Posted on December 22, 2017December 22, 2017 by fabsharford

What a great gift this life is and what a strange surprise it is for me to type those words. These are newer and fresher feelings for me, but I am believing more and more in the rewards of gratitude and contentment that can only be found on the far side of the long journey of grief.

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The darkest place.

Posted on December 5, 2017 by fabsharford

Oh, to find the grace that lives at the bottom of the darkest place.

Oh, soul, to find the grace that lives at the bottom of the darkest place is to find the grace that can survive the most unbearable conditions. It is to find the rarest of all graces, it is to find the grace that very few humans ever touch and see. It is to find a grace that burns with the brightest light, that is able to glow with no outside influence, that needs no external encouragement or nourishment to survive, but fuels itself without end.

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Full.

Posted on November 23, 2017November 23, 2017 by fabsharford

There’s a part of me that can’t focus today. I can’t do anything, because I’m so caught off guard by this fullness that is bubbling up inside of me.

As I sit here alone in this coffee shop all I can think is that I am all here. All of me. And what a shock that is. After all the loss, after watching the people be taken from me that I could not live without, after feeling essential parts of me be torn out, how can it be that I am all here?

How can it be that no part of me is missing?

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