Stooping For Manna

Dear Letters,

During the chaos and isolation that is COVID 19 pandemic, I’ve reached out to those I love by  penning letters, tangible reminders of my care. After years of correspondence, and thousands of letters later, even to friends in other countries, I know the truth of poet John Donne’s wisdom: “Letters mingle souls.”

But of all the letters I’ve ever written, none is as meaningful to me as my “love letters to God,” penned in my journal. Journaling has transformed my life as mine mingles with His in a soulful, expressive, permanent way.

I’d like to share two of those love letters here.

When struggling to make the transition from a fascinating career where I met hundreds of people daily, to coming home to raise my daughter, I struggled with a sense of isolation and depression. But when I began keeping a “joy journal,” thanking God for His many blessings, my attitude changed dramatically. Here is one blessing about which I wrote to God. Years later, I’m so glad I did!

“Dear God, thank You for the joy of Sheridan, my beautiful four-year-old imp, who has just interrupted this joyful reverie for the tenth time (honestly!) in fifteen minutes. So much for her quiet time, but I’m maintaining mine. She’s a precious, precocious, playful little darling—in addition to being extremely delicate, like fine bone china with roses painted on her cheeks. Thank You for this gift and reward. I don’t deserve her. Thank You for entrusting her to me. Thank You for our second ballet class today with Miss Renée. It was sheer joy to see Sheridan flit like a tiny pink butterfly across polished wood floors, lithely plié like a compressing concertina, and instantly rélevé, expanding again. Thank You for the grace of dance and the eagerness of young ballerinas—for their graceless grace and lilliputian movements. Thank You for the beauty of tiny proportions.”

The single-most life-transforming love letter I ever wrote was at a journaling retreat, where God healed me from the guilt I’d carried for years about my abortion, despite having confessed and repented. Journaling on the beach, I saw the ocean as a healing symbol of God’s cleansing and a burial plot where He’d had cast my sin to its depths. As I gazed at the endless watery expanse spreading across the horizon of infinity, for the first time in my life I truly sensed the deep, deep love of Jesus and His complete forgiveness. I lifted my pen, and my soul spilled this letter into my journal:

“Oh, God! Your grace is fluid, flowing, flooding, unleashed, unlimited, unmeasured, undeserved—a gift bestowed without merit, without cost to me, free—a ceilingless sky, a relentless riot of rain, a shoreless, bottomless ocean, there for the taking by the teaspoonful, cupful, bucketful, basinful, whatever amount for whatever need. And, with the taking, no diminishing supply—unending, unfathomable.

“For almost twenty years since the abortion, I’ve sandbagged the flow of Your grace and lay dying in the sand—parched and shriveled like snake skin, thick-tongued, cotton-eyed, unable to see or speak or receive forgiveness, unable to walk to the water to plunge my festering heart into Your ocean’s depths for cleansing release. I’m Bethesda Pool’s paralytic—immobile—waiting for You to stir the waters, lift me up, and put me in to baptize my wounds in the sea of Your grace, to bury my sin in the depths of the ocean. With Your help, I would be satisfied now to swallow even the tiniest raindrop of grace. I’m dying of thirst—thirst for Your love, thirst for Your pardon.

“Oh, Lord, I’m ready. I come to the water. Your love flows freely. I’m ready to receive it. Your living waters can redeem me. I’m ready—ready to let Your oceans of mercy, oceans of love, wash over me. I receive now the fullness of the forgiveness You gave when You opened wide your arms on Calvary’s cross—when You died for my sin of abortion. Lord, I’m ready. I’m ready.”

For the first time ever, I prayed freely in writing about my emotional pain from the abortion, about forgiving others involved, and about the healing love and forgiveness I now felt from God, enveloped as I was in His expansive embrace. Writing a letter to God made Him all the more real to me, and through this process, He finally set me free.

Love,

Lynn

PS   Will you join me on my Facebook page in a Covid 19 Correspondence Challenge? Each day in May, I’ll suggest  someone to whom you can reach out by writing a letter or brief note of encouragement. It’s one way  of taking a positive stand against corona virus. Lift your pen and lift their burden. Friend me on Facebook for details!

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Lynn D. Morrissey is the authoress of Love Letters to God: Deeper Intimacy through Written Prayer and other books, contributor to numerous bestsellers, and is a professional journal facilitator (CJF) for her ministry Sacred Journaling, speaker, and soloist. She’s passionate about encouraging transparency in women through reflective journaling.

Lynn lives in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband Michael and grown daughter Sheridan. You can contact Lynn via email or on her Facebook Page.  

Note: Lynn also recommends this book:  The Gift of a Letter by Alexandra Stoddard. 

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