I’m stuck in a pit of mud, the dark thick kind that keeps sucking me in deeper and fuller into its abyss.  My hands can’t move, my legs can’t kick.  My mind is racing for a rational way out, to race to the top and surge my way up.  I’m sucked in like a storm surrounding me without a name, no prediction of its force, only a gale force wind and black clouds closing in faster, my breath is gasping.

I move without motion.

Emancipated in a silenced fear that races through my inner mind that rages with a blank stare, I lie in silence.

I see her.

Her long blonde hair and gypsy green eyes tell me it’s ok.  A small hand reaches out to my sinking appendage that can’t move from the blackness I’m covered in.  “Help me!”  My voice is but a sound of no accord as my throat is parched past the shadows that are covering my shoulders now.

Light will come, just hold on.  Her song sings, loud and like honey to my ears.

Yet, I can’t.

I’m sinking fast and far, dark and smothered by the stretch my body is capable but that isn’t there.  My muscles tense as I wage the war against the black smoldering slithering mess I’m in yet again.

I turn my eyes down as the love is undone.  I’m not worthy, my life has surely become what it deserves to be-swallowed. 

Light will come, just hold on!  Her voice is getting more panicked.  I know she needs me and my teeth push together making a sound that growls with the wind.  Howling is coming as the breath of the sky shakes the leaves and makes ripples in the mud bath I’m lying in.

I’m sinking deeper into me.  Faster into the demons of my past and the fear of my future that the weakness will always hunt me down and eat me up, piece by bitter piece.

My mouth is close to the murky substance that collides with me every night.  The sick taste fills my buds before I can even feel it touch my palate.

You’re closer than you know.  Her voice is a shrill now.  Calling to the wind, begging for my mercy.

Closer than you know, she cries.  Fight your way out!

My lower lip feels the cold taste of the earth as it starts its wage against me slowly etching its way toward my lungs, to fill them deep so I can no longer taste air and slowly drown in my own demise.

Fight, fight FIGHT!  She is screaming now which is coming out in a singalong sonnet of her hope.  Her voice rises with each octave that raises its plea.  FIGHT, Mommy, FIGHT!  

My lids close, my lips are covered and I dip my face in head first.  I open my mouth and let it all in, the sin, the darkness, the feel of the rocks and debris fill my senses as the last thing I see before my eyes fill completely with the mud of my life is her long hair and gypsy eyes.

Lift up your eyes and see, Heaven is closer than you know!  I hear in a symphony before my ears are filled with the murky death that is calling me to fall into.  It’s not just a singular sweet honey voice anymore, it’s the orchestra of many.  Five voices sing out in unison.

Come back!  Fight!  You’re closer than you know!

I succumb to it, fall forward and backward and wayward and deeply into what the demons in my head say I deserve.  The last thing my ears penetrate is all of them; singing praises and a plea to God.

I know you’re there, come back!  They bellow to the storm above, the shadows that are taking me away.

My lungs collapse.  My body shakes with the faint air that’s left in me.  My mind goes blank and all I see is the mud I’m encased in.

God are you here, I calmly ask?  I let the mud in and then I’m nothing but motionless.

It’s dark here, silent.  The fear is gone and the sleep is deep.  Peace is on me and I’m walking on the mud now, yet it is a sea of blue not brown disparaging bleakness.  I am still.  And I am quiet.

But He is there reaching out to touch my hand and He grabs my heart to heal it from all my pain.

I’m there, where I thought I wanted to be.  To be rid of it all, the torture, the fear, the sinking sand I was falling deeper into every night, even as I smiled and tucked them into bed, wasn’t this what I fell asleep to after night fall?  The thought of it all ending here, me in quicksand, them okay without me being the burden I know I am.

LIFT UP!  LIFT UP, LIFT UP.

I hear her, him and him and him and him.  My head turns and my eyes open in the black of death and I shake with a fervor I haven’t felt in months.  For, I don’t really want to be in this sinking mud, this really isn’t what I desire, for them to be at the top and me at the bottom of a deep grave I’ve dug myself into.

I’ve got to find a way out.  To lift up.

By your spirit I will rise, from the ashes of defeat.

In your name I come alive.  The resurrecting King, is resurrecting me.

By your spirit I will rise. 

They are all signing praise songs.  In my imminent death, they are closer now to what God needs of them, singing out a symphony of a pardon for my life.

My arms find their lift and I fight with every muscle in my body to find a way to the top, to fill my lungs with the air that He gave me forty four years ago.  My legs kick, my torsor begs to rob my grave and give me another chance at Victory.

It’s always going to be a struggle for me, to find my way out of the sinking sand, but relying on the wrong crutches to help me walk is never going to bring me back to the top.  I have to hold on to my King, who can defeat the ashes of depression and suicidal thoughts.  He declares that as the mud doesn’t quite touch the fullness of my soul, it only delights in my demise.  Loves me giving up, cheers me on as I give up.

Yet..God hears the voices of my army.

They are signing now.

And somehow I can hear them.  Their tearstained echos find their way into the pit.  I can hear them now.

I fight.  I climb my way out and my head emerges from the pit, filled with debris and sticky mud that covers my milky white face.

She’s going to be okay! I see her long hair and gypsy eyes come dancing towards me.

His and his and his strong presence come running behind her.  “Yes she is, baby, yes she is.”  He says; my husband and the love that needs me

I grab their hands as they slowly lift me out with all of their might, pulling me from the trenches of a thousand pounds of mud.

Mommy! 

Darling!  My voice dances with hers as I know I belong with her and him and him and him.

It’s all I hear as I lift my voice in praise for a God who doesn’t want me to hide my face from Him as he has surely come for me-sent my family-my friends-and the sounds of Heaven to Praise a God that wants me here.  Even when I cried out to fall into the sinking sand, He was lifting their voices in praise because I couldn’t.

They dry me clean and I hug her, and him and him and him over and over again, promising that I won’t fall so deep again.  I may struggle, I may succumb to pain and call out in the depths of the night where I only hear their rhythmic breathing, but I vow to never fall into the quicksand again, but to lift my praise in times of despair.

Just as they have done for me, I will do for Him, for He loves me and needs me here to lift up the heavens and tell my tale of being an overcomer.  A fighter, even when the quicksand of life beckons me to fall into it, I won’t for I have seen the cost is deep and my life is worth light and praising even in the despair of quicksand.