Dear John

We are finally having a few rooms in our house painted.  Yahoo!  I'm not excited at all.  So disturbing that I have the colors sea salt, sockeye and french grey memorized.  I have told JT it's the taupe paint in every single room of this house that made me mentally ill.  In all seriousness, super excited to have some color change since I work from home and see this house almost 24/7.  This has made me do some reorganizing and merging of files.  Lo and behold, my blue Peachford folder popped up in the organizing.  I flipped through all of the pages and got chills when I ran across some song lyrics and a page of Bible verses.  

Per my previous entry, Girl, Interrupted I arrived at The Peach on a bleak Saturday with almost zero sleep.  I can assure you Sunday morning I wasn't feeling much better.  Reality had set in big time accompanied by a big headache and withdrawal symptoms due to changing of medications.  I never in a million years thought I would know how an addict in detox felt but I somewhat have an indication now.  One of the MHA's yelled, "If you are going, line up for church!"  I sunk down into my chair.  I didn't have the energy or mental fortitude to go to church.  I was hurting so bad and was in a strange place with complete strangers.  God had a different plan.  My sweet friend "S" came over to me and said, "Come on Natalie.  You are going with me.  We can do this together.  We need this.  We need Him."  Indeed, we did.    

So on that Sunday morning, March the 9th, in a gym I worshipped with men and women in pain, in grief, in confusion, in anger and any other negative emotion you could think of.  On a tiny CD player that reminded me of 7th grade, the below song by Mandisa played that touched me like no other has in a very long time.  I won't type all of the lyrics, just the several that gave me chills.  


Dear John, How you doin' 
I've been thinking about you
I'm not sure how to say it, but I've been praying daily 
for some kind of breakthrough

I've said this a thousand times
And I know you don't see my side
But I do it 'cause I love you
So, dear John here's the truth....

There's freedom
On the other side of
Things that keep us tied up and afraid
There's hope in every situation
No matter what you're facing every day.  

Dear John, People hurt you
And you know I've been hurt too
There's no way to escape it, 
Don't let your pain be wasted 
No, don't let it get the best of you

'Cause God took my broken parts
And gave me a brand new start
Now I am walking, breathing, living proof
And, dear john, He can do this for you.  

Dear John Video

That song along with the woman from a Dunwoody church got me through that day.  She held my hands as I cried and prayed for me and one of the things she said was, "Natalie, every morning we get a fresh batch of mercy."  

I am walking, breathing, living proof.  xo, n