Draw Your Chalk Circle

As I'm posting on revival this week, I want you to know it must start with me. For a long time, about seven years, I have let a bitter root grow and bind me in my soul. I could laugh, but I struggled with my life's circumstance. I wasn't happy with a husband who worked away during the week. This spread to being unhappy with everything in my life. Either I was angry or totally blah.
My tongue grew very sharp, saying words I hadn't said in years. They just came so easily to the surface as my anger grew. I lived road rage. I made gestures as I smiled in my voice on the cell phone to my superiors at work.
I hate to admit this, but sometimes, even the people I was to help, I despised. I didn't want to be bothered. I wanted to retreat into myself.
And the nagging thought continued, I'm so far from God. I'm not who I used to be. I can't perform. I have failed. I continued to hang steadfastly to my savior. I hung by a string, but it proved stronger than any stainless steel. I really had to believe Jesus always loved me, always will. His word says, He will never leave me or forsake me. He loves me with an everlasting love.
A crisis in our family this spring has miraculously brought my husband and I closer than we have been in a long time. I experienced heart palpitations, rapid heart rate and a feeling of deep fatigue. I hardly climbed the few steps in my house, then leaned against the wall as the blood surged through my body. The determination after tests was I'm anemic and surprise, have low iron. I also knew I was depressed, so hesitantly initiated Zoloft.
 All the experiences, knowledge, faith I had seemed slowly ebbing away, but they remained. I knew the promises from all those years of reading my Bible, as well as actual freshness in my faith. I knew it, but my body seemed to rebel. I surrendered every morning, especially in the shower to God's control. Yet, I continued to feel the burden of life. I didn't understand. If I believed why was my body responding so poorly to all the stress?
I have lived with stress for a very long time. My mother's cancer. My father dying way too soon. Raising children, working full time. Being a nurse. Yet, I always seemed to bounce from it. I took care of myself. Ate mostly right and enjoyed it. I walked. I prayed. I sang praises. This winter the cares seemed to attack my body.
I have opened more to God. I more freely confess my sins. Sunday morning as I prayed at home, I said, "I love You." as I haven't for a long time.
I must say one thing with all this, not only have I lost the bitter root, that I often asked to be removed, I'm also losing weight.
Revival must start with the individual. Prayer of a few can bring it about. I have drawn the chalk circle around me and asked that what is in that circle be changed.