You are not alone!

Monday morning came. I could not get up. Like a little child who has walked too far and plops down, refusing to go a step further, my body said, “Nope.”

I couldn’t blame exhaustion, nor illness, nor any other physical problem. For no apparent reason, I felt paralyzed.

Fifteen years earlier, a similar paralysis overtook me. My husband and I and our two elementary-age daughters had just moved from Mississippi to Indiana. While selling one house and buying another, we lived temporarily in a two-bedroom apartment.

For months, we faced all the tasks relocating involves. We made all the adjustments relocating involves. We experienced all the emotions relocating involves. We house-hunted, enrolled the girls in school and scouted out everything from a grocery store to a doctor’s office (Amanda got an ear infection two days before school started). Living in cramped quarters, learning a strange new world, we tackled the daily tasks that used to be simple but suddenly proved frustrating and complex.

Those months, I experienced periodic bouts of paralysis. The first time it happened, it frightened me. But each time I yielded to that feeling of “I cannot go another step!” – instead of fighting it – I soon felt replenished enough to get up and go again.

Since then, I’ve learned that relocation overload isn’t the only thing that can trigger paralysis. Other triggers include: fear, depression, feelings of powerlessness or purposelessness and unrelieved stress.

Monday morning, immobilized, I pondered the cause.

When at last I found strength to get out of bed, I made coffee and padded upstairs. Entering my office, I saw several booklets scattered in front of a tall bookcase. Our cat Pewter loves to climb behind the books in our bookshelves and then dislodge the books.

The top booklet in the pile displayed a single red rose and four words in large letters: “You are not alone!”

Reading the words from across the room, I heard God say them to me.

Intrigued, I sat in my rattan chair by the window, sipped coffee and read that booklet. A friend of mine, Pam Whitley, and a friend of hers, Pam Wanzer, had created the booklet four years earlier to help new widows.

“Grief can paralyze,” Pam and Pam wrote.

Monday morning, I wasn’t dealing with widowhood. Yet I realized: Grief had immobilized me.

Over the years, I’ve grieved a number of losses, including several that did not involve death of a loved one. In Indiana, grief over moving hundreds of miles away from family members and lifelong friends contributed to my bouts of paralysis.

Now, I felt mystified – and strangely comforted. I’d experienced a wave of grief strong enough to immobilize me, yet subtle enough that I still didn’t understand it.

Ah but God understood what I did not. To tell me so, he’d used a mischievous cat and a booklet I didn’t think applied to me.

When Pam and Pam quoted Hebrews 13:5-6 (AMP), he spoke again:

“He [God] Himself has said, I will not in any way fail you nor give you up nor leave you without support. [I will] not, [I will] not, [I will] not in any degree leave you helpless nor forsake nor let [you] down (relax My hold on you)! [Assuredly not!] So we take comfort and are encouraged and confidently and boldly say, The Lord is my Helper; I will not be seized with alarm [I will not fear or dread or be terrified].”

In other words, I will conquer paralysis.

“Do the next thing,” Pam and Pam advised.

“You are not alone!”

. . . . . . .

To find most of the text of the booklet, “You Are Not Alone!”, visit Pam Whitley’s singlewivesclub blog.