When the days are longer and heavier than you planned, you lift your head and let grace run down your cheeks. When you find yourself running new races with familiar faces that make you doubt your ability to carry out God’s mission, you bow your head and find strength in your weakness.
There is a poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley that is a very powerful poem about taking control of oneself. However, I change the words to show how GOD takes control of me in times of struggle. It then becomes a battle cry, a charge that goes out into the darkness that I am not done because HE is not done. Today was one of those days that foster/trauma/special needs mommas know all too well. It depleted me and made me question everything I knew about my parenting in an instant. So I prayed and prayed some more. Then, I came back to this poem…my version, at least.
Invictus (my edited version)
William Ernest Henley, 1849 – 1903
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank [my God]
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
[HE is] the master of my fate:
[HE is] the captain of my soul.
We don’t always get to choose our battles, some days they choose us. Yet, we get a choice in our weapons and battle strategy. We get a choice in all kinds of things. I am a firm believer that things do not happen TO us but rather WITH us. Let us choose wisely how we participate in our circumstances.
Fostering Reflections 