Early this morning, before the day had a chance to get loud, my phone lit up with a simple question:

“Can I get 10 minutes of your time?”

After more than 40 years apart, God had already reconnected us… and this morning, He gave us the time to remember why.

But God doesn’t measure time the way we do. Ten minutes turned into an hour and a half. Tears. Laughter. Testimony. We weren’t catching up. We were bearing witness.

She told me about losing her husband. How the grief felt like it might finish what life had already taken.

Then she said it… “But God said no.”

She told me about her  rare illness. The kind where doctors speak carefully, and silence says more than words.
And again “But God said no.”

Every story she told had a place where it could have ended. Every chapter carried the weight of finality. But it didn’t end there. Because God kept interrupting what should have been the last line.

And somewhere in the middle of her testimony, I felt my own rise up quietly. Moments I don’t always name. Situations that could have taken me out in ways nobody else would have understood.

And if I’m honest… Some of those moments didn’t look like mercy at first. But I’m still here.

So even there, I say it: But God said no.

No to the thing that tried to take me out.
No to grief settling in as permanent.
No to despair having the final word.
No.

Psalm 118:17
“I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.”

That’s what this morning was. Declaring. Not polished. Not practiced. Just two women, after decades apart, brought back together by grace… reminding each other that what should have taken us out didn’t get permission.

Sometimes the most powerful testimony is also the simplest. “It should have ended me…but God said no.”

And if you’re reading this from the middle of something that feels like an ending, hold on.
The same God who interrupted ours is still writing yours.

Love, Chelle ( And Lisa)
defygravitywithoutwings.com