I’ve been wronged. Why should I not be bitter?

Treated unfairly, as though I don’t deserve better.

Suffering consequences for choices I never made.

I’m strange not special, odd not unique, tossed apart not set apart.

Bitterness I drink, bitterness I sip.

I sleep with my oddness, wake with my strangeness and live with my bitterness.

I chose not this burden, it chose me and like a jealous wife follows me everywhere, weighing me down-spirit choking, soul gasping, body crumbling, all under this bitter weight.

How dare you demand I be bitter no more?

Roll away this load and with a light heart I’ll smile.

They point at me – jesting me, poking me, mocking me.

Bitterness, bitterness, bitterness all around and around all.

I sat there sinking in the mud hole of my anger, suffocating from my own rage, angry with life, tired of men, hidden from God.

I stood at the door beckoning the grim reaper ‘please pay me a visit’ and with open hands I would welcome him. Better dead than bitter, better entombed than enraged, life is overrated.

A knock! At last the grim reaper was here, I fumbled over myself in excitement to welcome my own death. I opened the door and He walked in instead, brighter than life and bigger than all, too magnificent to be grim, too loving to be reaper. I skidded with all my might heading the opposite direction, lest my darkness spewing heart stain even the edge of his light crusted garments. But His arms longer than the great wall and quicker than Bolt went round me and like the clenched jaws of Sabre tooth, drew me in to himself. I shuddered to look sure I would stain even the stainless and spread my cancer of bitterness on another.

He was gone, I opened my eyes to see that his glow had driven my groans and his light had shone upon my life, driving eternally away my darkness and stains. It was all gone and my heart was beating ‘free’ ‘dom’, ‘free’ ‘dom’, ‘free’ ‘dom’. I sought for my pain only to find His pleasures, I opened the wardrobe of my bitterness only to find garments of praise, my account of shame empty and my store of Joy overflowing.

Where is my knight in shining Armour? My hero who saved me from myself? I looked around to no avail, only to hear His voice from within my very heart crying ‘over here’.

This myriad of happenings all in a split second as I answered the altar call on this Sunday morning, never uttering a word, with folks I never knew but who now felt closer than kin. Kneeling on the altar, live tears streaming from my eyes, once bitter, once angry, now saved, now changed, all because His ears hear even the mute cries of a bitter heart.