rescue - part 2

You can read part 1 HERE.  Still not sure if i'll finish - or how many parts this little journey will document, but pressing on with part 2...

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i have stars in my eyes. Makes me wonder if they cloud and distort my view or make it clearer. - january 1996
i can read... or maybe remember... the doubt in my words. Pages and pages of oozing love, passionate displays of trumpeting affection - and yet this line jumps out at me. It wasn't my love that i doubted i'm sure - because even now my heart beats slowly - almost painfully in my ears when he calls to tell me he's coming home.  It was doubt over my actions, my lack of wisdom, the careless destruction of my character. i force myself to read from the beginning. On these pages, i find fleeting wide-eyed romanticized awe over a random musician, disappointment over a song that bombed and elation over a performance that rocked... little of substance, other than the one small doubt voiced above.
And then... at the bottom of a page that has no other mention of my Father, these verses...

"But i trust in Your unfailing love. My heart rejoices in Your salvation. i will sing to the Lord for He has been good to me." - psalm 13:5,6

"Don't let anyone think little of you because you are young, be their ideal; let them follow the way you teach and live; be a pattern for them in your love, your faith and your clean thoughts." 1timothy 4:11-13

And the battle waged.

My Father spoke truth through His word... He didn't abandon me. i have the proof captured in my own handwriting.
Hey, daughter - you're mine. i gave you a framework for love, for marriage, for purity - not as a stern task master - but because i love you so very, very much...
As i read the parts of my journal that are hard for me to read, i see Him reaching out to me; trying to save me from my own weakness, offering me an alternative, a better way, a straight path.
The whisper in the wind was lost on me.
Hey, Papa? i wish i would have heard you. i wish i would have listened. i know now that You were with me - and You never did take Your fingers off of me.
i turn the page, and it brings me to that old distance. The distance between us - from Edmonton, Alberta to Kelowna, BC - may as well have been the distance across the milky way. Phone calls in those days were excruciatingly expensive, and a full time student and a boy still living with his mama and daddy don't have many pennies to spare... (that said, the phone companies made hundreds off of us in those months). i didn't have my own computer - neither did Neil. It was a different world then - and we were hundreds of miles apart.
Eight pages into my journal, there's an entry written in red ink:
i'm scared. i have no one to talk to except Neil and he's so far away and it costs so much money to talk to him... so i will write a letter to God...
And i did. My childlike fear, my contrition, my agony and shame - i brought to Him - along with an aside that i find interesting:
"if only people knew. i'm not telling anyone. That's for sure."
And now i can laugh - just like He must have - as he orchestrated His answer...
"Do you think I'm going to leave you there, Daughter? Agonizing over a secret shame that you're intent on keeping covered, rotting and destroying you from the inside out? I am your Rescuer - and i will teach you to love Truth just like I do... "
Unbeknownst to me, a little life was already created - Truth was going to be acknowledged and my Great Rescue began...

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PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

PART 6