For many years of my life....I experienced constant drowning....a constant near death feeling in my soul.

I had been through much pain in my life and I held onto it like it was my most prized possession.

I wallowed in it....I immersed myself in it....it became everything that I was.

It was a sea of self pity....a black sea of hoplessness.

I constantly craved someone to cheer me up....but I would not even try to cheer myself up.

I think that I liked the attention that I got from everyone feeling sorry for me.

I lost many friends during this time of my drowning in self pity.

I think most of them got fed up with my constant whining about the same things over and over again.

No matter what advice anyone would give me....I found a way to swim back into that black ocean of despair.

I pushed the ones away in anger who would no longer pity me...I felt like they did not care for me any longer.

I realize now that they did care....very much for me....but they realized that I was not willing to be saved.

Finally I was alone...free to let the black waves cascade over me.

I relished it for a very long time.

Unwittingly knowing....I found myself alone in that despair....with no one wanting to pour pity upon me any longer.

That is when I finally saw the urgency of my state of mind.

I became hateful, envious of others who were happy, bitter and full of malice.

That sea was poison to my soul.....it dimmed my light....so I could see no Lighthouse in the distance.

My own hard heart had me in the middle of that black ocean....dog paddling without a life jacket.

Suddenly I saw a glimmer of hope.

In the far distance...I caught a glimpse of a beautiful light....a Lighthouse on a Hill.

A lighthouse of self love.....

A lighthouse of love for others...

A lighthouse that God himself set there for me.

I swam ....and swam with every bit of strength that I had left in me.

Reaching the shore...I coughed up the water that had filled my lungs.....the black water of self pity.....the black water of depression...the black water of loving to dwell on my pain.

God met me there....and dried me off with the breath of life that he blew upon me.

He told me....."Jennifer....I am making you the Lighthouse Keeper......Shine this beacon light on all those you see drowning."

I am trying.....that is my motive in this entry....to shine a light upon all the drowning souls that read it.

Shine on my friends....shine on.....all is well.

Swim to the shore.

The shore of Love.