A girl I went to college with has just been diagnosed with stage III breast cancer.  She's young and the mother of small children and has spent the last several years beside her husband working together as missionaries in a third world country.  A mutual friend of ours told me today, "I just know God's going to take care of her.  I just believe that she's going to be all right."  I smiled and nodded, but inside, I was saying, "No! You don't know that!"  Obviously, I want my friend, this lovely mother and wife and missionary, to be all right.  I would love to follow her journey and witness a miracle or at least know that she has recovered.  But the truth is, the longer I live, the more examples I see that God doesn't always intervene in the way we want.  Sometimes young mothers die.  And it makes absolutely no sense to us, humanly speaking.

As Christians, we like to throw out the verse that states all things work together for good to those who love Christ, as if those words should automatically resolve any pain or discomfort in our lives.  And I'm not denying the truth in those words, but sometimes, God allows very ugly, hurtful things in our lives and we may never see the good that came from it during our lifetime.  Sometimes, mothers lose their babies or marriages are destroyed by betrayal or children are orphaned or a loved one turns to substance abuse or a teenager daughter gets pregnant or your spouse suffers a devastating illness and it just doesn't make any sense.  Sometimes you serve God faithfully and willingly and lovingly, yet he doesn't give you a spouse or a baby or financial relief or spare you from rejection and betrayal.  And our flesh wants to instruct God that WE DESERVE BETTER!  This is no way to take care of those who love him and follow him!  And perhaps that's because we forget the verse after the famous "all things work together for good" verse that says Christians are predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus.  And I don't know about you, but in order for me to ever look anything remotely like Jesus, there's a lot of junk and idols that need to be removed from my life and a lot of growing pains that I need to experience.  And it can hurt like crazy.  Trust me, I know.  But I'm sloooowly coming to the point where I can turn up my hands to God and say, "Your ways don't make sense to me.  Sometimes You don't make sense to me.  But if (fill in the blank), as ugly as it may be, is what You predestined for my life in order to make me more like Jesus and for my greater good, then so be it.  I have to trust You.  Because if I can't trust You, then my life is going to be miserable, always fighting You and questioning and complaining and crying.  And that's no way to live.  But just maybe, could You give me a little glimpse of understanding?  A little peek at the good You're accomplishing during this hardship I'm going through?  Because that would sure make this journey a lot easier.  Thanks."

Realizing a Dream

Writing has always been something I enjoy and I've wanted for a long time now to express myself in a way that maybe will encourage someone else.  So today I decided I would start blogging.  For a long time, I've hesitated to do so because I don't really have a theme for a blog.  I'm not particularly good at or passionate about anything enough to have an ongoing blog dealing with that topic.  But I do have my story to tell and insights I'm learning about life that I wish someone would have shared with me long before now.

Life is messy and complicated and sometimes ugly.  Life is lovely and simple too.  I want to notice the small things along with the big things because together, that is what makes up a life.  And the small and big things are all gifts from God, and how many gifts do we fail to notice because we're so busy trying to get to the next big thing?  So let's take the time to see beauty in the little things, the almost unseen things, the take-for-granted things.  You might have to stop and look really closely, but I promise, it's there.

An up-close picture my son took of his bb gun