Prelude to a Pit: A Soft Place to Land

**Just getting started? Head back to day 1 of Prelude to a Pit: Just Another Day to read from the beginning**

It's a Friday at 1:45pm.  My hope dissolves.

Lord, please don't leave me.

~~~

I feel like I'm sinking.  Down, down, down.  Like quicksand, dense and deep.

There's pizza on my breath and the hypnotic whirr of the car motor beneath me.  

It feels like my efforts were nil.  I had fought and lost, I thought, hanging my head in shame.

The phone call had been a concrete memorial of the life I once knew, dark and eerie as a mausoleum.

But my mother, awash in the darkness in the front seat, raises her left arm, placing her hand on the roof of the car.

"You are still good," she says firmly.

Tears well in my eyes, and the cross on my back chafes me, reminding me of its presence.  

But I look at her hand, tapping the ceiling, and for a moment, I push away the mourning to see.

"Yes, He is," I affirmed.

Had I forgotten?  Surely not.  This isn't quicksand my feet are set upon.

Momentarily, I'm filled with courage and pride.  Pride of the One who doesn't let me down.  Who promises good in the face of extraordinary evil.  Who makes man out of dust and a universe out of nothing.

He is where my feet are.

Not sand.  A Rock.  A firm foundation that holds fast to my soul when I'm drowning in fear and doubt.

He is the reason I'm going through this time. And He is the reason I am surviving this time.

He saves, Oh my!  He saves when you reach for his hand in the deep waters.  He saves.

My circumstances are not good.  I can see that, even from a distance, if I could manage to tear myself from its grip for just a second.

But my God.  My Savior.  Oh, how He is good.  The Light in my darkness.  The dancing when I mourn.  The life to my soul.

I'm not drowning.  I'm not sinking, save for how I sink into His presence, His love, His faithfulness.

I smile, though I was sure I'd forgotten how.

Goodness doesn't always come how we think it will.  It comes in beauty, in truth, in love.  But it also comes in trials that urge us to persevere, in pruning that makes us grow, in a cross that crucified our sin.

Goodness, me.

Did I forget?  No.

He is good.  He is good.

**Tune in tomorrow night when it all ties together...**