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  • Keep Breathing
    • Keep Breathing: Introduction
    • Part 1
      • Stay Grounded
      • Keep Breathing
      • Gather Information
      • Feel What You Feel
      • Take in Support
      • Pray
      • Practice Surrender
      • Notice Your Reactivity
    • Part 2
      • Realize What Is Happening to You
        Is Happening To Everyone in Your Life
      • Take Inventory
      • Let Go of Shame
      • Extend Grace
      • Show Up
      • Learn Vulnerability
      • Make Amends
      • Stay Present in Times of Waiting
    • Part 3
      • Be Still and Keep Moving
      • Know You Are Not Alone
      • Ask for Healing
      • Seek Guidance
      • Meditate
      • Pursue Peace
      • Acknowledge Death
      • Grieve
    • Part 4
      • Express Gratitude
      • Stay Open to Joy
      • Make Room for Laughter
      • Celebrate Each Day
      • Let Yourself Be Carried
      • Be Who You Are
      • Know That You Are Loved
  • Desperate Hope
    • Shocked by the Diagnosis
    • Responding to Feelings of Fear, Anxiety, and Sadness
    • Ordering Desperate Hope
  • TLC Leader’s Manual
    • Group Leader Resources
      • Introduction to TLC
      • Meeting Format
      • Notes to Group Leaders
      • When a Group Member Dies
    • Strong Feelings
      • Understanding our Feelings
      • The Emotional Roller Coaster
      • Living With Fear
      • Dealing With Depression
      • Living with Anger
      • Grieving Our Losses
      • The Experience of Gratitude
      • Celebration and Joy
      • Experiencing Peace
      • Finding Hope
    • Challenges to Faith
      • Stretching Our Faith
      • Prayer
      • Examining Our View of God
      • Healing Prayer
      • The Lord Is With Us
      • God’s Healing Presence
    • Changing Perspectives
      • The Seasons Of Survival
      • Living Sanely in An Insane World
      • One Day At A Time
      • Positive Thinking
      • Accepting Our Need for Help
      • Building Friendships
      • Perspectives on Treatment
      • Coping With Pain
      • Repairing Our Self Esteem
  • Contact

Know That You Are Loved

I trust in your unfailing love.
Psalm 13:5

After my second surgery my husband and I spent a week at the beach. Both of us needed to recuperate from the many weeks of uncertainty and strain. It was the week of our thirty-seventh wedding anniversary. So we needed to both rest and celebrate.

We were no longer waiting for results. We were no longer anticipating the possibility of radiation therapy. We knew the cancer had been removed and that I did not have to go through radiation. I was done. I was cancer free.

We rested well that week. It was the middle of March, a few weeks before Easter break, so the beach was empty most of the time. Beautiful. And quiet.

On the last full day that we were there, we were blessed with a rain storm that lasted only a few hours. When the sky cleared, it was a deep, brilliant blue, strewn with an array of white clouds that were turning golden. It was too beautiful to stay inside, so I went out for a long walk.

While I walked my heart turned to God. I was full of gratitude and awe. I had no words. The sky said what I could not. The storm had come. It had baptized us with water. It had purified the air. Then it cleared, leaving a few clouds behind to reflect the light of the sun. It was peaceful now. Everything felt blessed. And hushed.

As I walked, I found myself looking at the sand, scanning for a rock I might save. I am a bit of a scavenger for unusually shaped rocks, but I reminded myself that rocks were not the agenda that day. They paled in comparison to the drama of the light show going on in the sky above me and on the ocean and sand in front of me.

After walking for a while I stopped and stood for a time, marveling at the gold and silver light in the sky and the wonderful way the light was reflected on the water and the sand. I was in state of quiet awe.

After standing in that spot for a while, I glanced down at my feet before moving on. There, right in front of me, was a smooth, flat rock in the perfect shape of a heart. I picked it up and held it as my eyes brimmed with tears.

The One who created the vast beauty I had been enjoying was the same God who had cared for me with such tender mercy. There was something about holding this rock in my hand that provided a tangible symbol for the many experiences of God’s provision that had graced the recent months. I found myself talking to God in the simple words of a child. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I whispered. “You always help me and take care of me. And you tell me in a hundred ways that you love me. Thank you. I love you.”

I thought for a moment about our grandson at Christmas when he was two and a half years old. With each gift he unwrapped he would say to the person who had given it to him, “You gave it me?” And when that person said, “Yes,” he threw himself at them, wrapped his arms around them and said, “Oh, kank you!”

That is what my heart was saying to God, “You gave it me? All the gifts of peace and guidance and help? You gave it me, God? Thank you.”

I carried the rock home. I think of it as an I-love-you rock from God. It is a tangible symbol, a physical reminder, a visualization of how intimately and tenderly I am loved—of how intimately and tenderly we all are loved.

Now, when I pick up the heart-shaped rock and hold it in my hand I am reminded of all the years of healing, all the gifts of love God has given to me. “I love you,” God says over and over. “Thank you,” I whisper back. “Thank you.”

May God grant you the capacity to trust that most fundamental of all truths: you are loved. Always. Faithfully. Unconditionally. Tenderly. Intimately.

When you don’t know what to do…know that you are loved.

Questions for reflection and discussion

1. What difficulties have you had believing that you are loved by God?

2. What has helped you to trust God’s love for you?

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Keep Breathing

Keep Breathing by Juanita Ryan is available for purchase at amazon.com

Guided Meditations by Juanita Ryan

These are downloadable mp3 files of guided meditations on biblical texts by Juanita Ryan. Each is approximately 40 minutes long.

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A Meditation to Help Reduce Fear by Juanita Ryan -- $5.99
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A Meditation to Help Reduce Shame by Juanita Ryan -- $5.99
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A Meditation to Help Reduce Stress by Juanita Ryan -- $5.99
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A Meditation to Help Reduce Depression by Juanita Ryan -- $5.99
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Quote of the moment

"I think the reason we sometimes experience joy after the expression of gratitude and grief is that expressions of gratitude and expressions of grief both ground us in the truth and open our hearts. Gratitude and grief are both vulnerable states. They are states of grace. They are moments when we let down our defenses a bit, when we soften, when we are receptive to God’s tender mercies in ways that might not be possible in the more ordinary moments of life."
Juanita Ryan

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