Category: Faith

Giving Your Present Trial to the Only One Who Matters

As stressful as life can become, as scary as change can be, as painful as heartbreak can feel, God can and will get you through whatever you are facing if you will only let go of your troubles and pain, grab hold of His hand and let Him lead you. He can and WILL rescue you. That doesn’t mean things will always change for the better right here right now, but it does mean He WILL get you through it in this life or the next. He is all any of us need.

Psalm 138:
(1) I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart; before the “gods” I will sing your praise.
(2) I will bow down toward your holy temple and will praise your name for your love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word.
(3) When I called, you answered me; you made me bold and stouthearted.
(4) May all the kings of the earth praise you, O Lord, when they hear the words of your mouth.
(5) May they sing of the ways of the Lord, for the glory of the Lord is great.
(6) Though the Lord is on high, he looks upon the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar.
(7) Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes, with your right hand you save me.
(8) The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O Lord, endures forever – do not abandon the works of your hands.

Lucy – My First Step to Independence

If you have read my last post, you know that my life has recently been turned upside down. My husband and I are in the midst of a divorce to end our 25 year relationship, and I am living with my 22 year old son. Nothing in my life is recognizable as even similar to what my life was a year ago or even six months ago.

In the last few years, my husband has been very controlling. Everything was his way or no way. I was unable to please him in any way, and years ago I gave up trying to please him at all. I should not have given up. Doing so did not help our marriage but, more importantly, it did not help me. I became accustomed to failing as a wife and being criticized daily. I stopped trying to succeed as a wife because I could never please him in any way. I was always wrong and was never truly allowed to make any decisions or freely express an opinion on anything without some form of backlash.

Enough with the past…Let’s move forward to the present. I feel a peace at my son’s house that I have never felt before. There is no drama. There is no arguing. There is nothing to create stress. It is truly amazing to experience true peace for the first time in nearly 43 years of life, but peace does not travel alone. Peace pairs with quiet. My son’s job requires that he works out of town for a week or two at a time. When he is gone, his house is quiet, too quiet. It is so quiet that I feared the depression I have fought for many years and only recently walked out of would return.

I don’t like being alone. I don’t like sleeping alone. I don’t like having no one to talk to or watch a movie with on the evenings when my son is out of town. I wanted Hank. Hank is a half English mastiff and half great dane we got for my daughter two years ago. My daughter loves him dearly and has worked with him so much that he is a perfect gentle giant in whatever environment she takes him to. Hank loves and respects my daughter, but Hank chose me as a friend. I don’t know why, but he has always been very attached to me. I missed him and wanted to bring him to my son’s house to live with me, but I knew my daughter would be devastated. I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t hurt her any more than this divorce is already doing, but I missed Hank so much that I cried frequently about him.

As soon as I moved in with my son, he started suggesting that he should get a puppy since he had me to take care of it while he worked out of town. I have told him numerous times that I was not going to take care of a puppy because I had too much going on right now. Then I realized I needed a companion and a puppy seemed like an excellent idea, so after five weeks of telling my son, “No, we cannot get a puppy,” I called my son and asked him if I could get a puppy. He immediately told me I could and then teased me about my complete reversal.

I decided I was going to get the dog I always wanted but my husband always told me I could not have. I wanted a harlequin great dane puppy. I searched online and found the exact puppy I wanted. It was within my price range and seemed too good to be true. I was so excited…until I found out it really was too good to be true. It was a scam. I was devestated. I was finally making my first big decision for my own happiness without having to answer to my husband, but that decision fell apart. I cried that evening because I felt like my entire world had been turned upside down and God must have been punishing me by making one more thing go against me. I was so very wrong.

My best friend knew how sad I was about the puppy. I didn’t know she was spending the entire evening trying to find me a great dane until she called me to tell me she found one. It was not a puppy. It was a 2 year old female, rather than the male puppy I wanted and I was very skeptical. I didn’t think I was going to like the dog but I contacted the owners. Not only was she not the age nor gender I wanted, she was also not a harlequin marked dane. My son suggested we drive to Georgia and at least meet the dog. I really didn’t think there was a chance that she was a dog I would want…but then I met her.

Lucy did not fit any of the criteria I had set in place for the dog I wanted, but God knew what I needed. I had prayed frequently that He would give me the puppy that I wanted, but He answered those prayers with a firm, “No.” Instead, He gave me Lucy. Lucy is so much like Hank that it is almost like he is here with me. She has his personality, his mannerisms, his size, his habits… She is absolutely precious. It took only moments for Lucy to win my love.

I’m sure you have heard that country song that says, “I thank God for unanswered prayers.” That is how I feel about Lucy. She is an amazing companion. She is happy and energetic and likes to snuggle on the couch and sit in your lap, though she sits taller on the couch than I do. She will sit beside me and watch movies. She even sleeps in my waterbed with me most nights and has only put one hole in it. I could never have found a more perfect companion than Lucy. If God had given me what I wanted instead of what He gave me, I would have missed out on His blessing, because Lucy is truly a blessing from God.

Worry

Worry…I think this one word describes my worst problem, my biggest failure.  I worry about everyone and everything. I worry about my children, my husband, my extended family, my friends, my coworkers, my neighbors, my marriage, my faith, my job, my finances, my church, my Bible study group, my education, my community, my nation, my blog… I even worry about the fact that I worry too much.  I guess you could say worrying has become an addiction in my life.  I truly never realized until I typed that last sentence that I had an addiction to worry.

Jesus was very clear in Matthew 6:25-27 when He instructed us not to worry.  “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Who among you by worrying can add a single day to his life (Matthew 6:25-27 NIV).”  Jesus didn’t give a complicated sermon.  He didn’t weave it into a parable.  He didn’t hesitate or stutter. He gave His message clearly when He instructed us not to worry because it won’t do any good.  No matter how much time and energy you devote to worrying, you will never gain any advantage in whatever situation you are worrying about.  You will simply waste time…time you never get back, time that could have been used productively, time you may have enjoyed, time forever sacrificed on an alter of the great deceiver, that serpent who told the first lie that triggered the first worry.

Worry does two basic things.  It tears down and it builds up.  It tears down the realities of your present and the possibilities of your future.  It tears down your relationships.  It tears down your potential accomplishments.  It tears down your self esteem, your self worth.  It tears down your immune system and destroys your health.  It tears down much that should have been and forever robs your future of those should-have-beens that now may never be.

Worry tears down everything you allow it to, but it must have at least some measure of your permission for worry to be this devastatingly powerful.  You must hand your authority over your own life to worry in order for it to be able to tear down anything.  You made a decision, consciously or unconsciously, to allow your mind to be controlled by worry.  Worry doesn’t have a mind of its own.  It must hijack yours before it can do anything.  How much it tears down is up to you.

The second thing worry does is build up.  It builds walls between you and those around you.  It builds walls between you and God.  It builds walls as tall and as strong as you allow it to build.  If allowed, worry will build walls so tall and so strong that you will feel encased in an impenetrable room with no doors or windows.  You can hear the activity on the other side of the walls but never be able to live life beyond your worry-built walls.

In his letters to the Philippians the Apostle Paul instructed them, “Be anxious (worried) for nothing but in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philipians 4:6-7 NIV).” Paul knew what he was talking about.  He suffered persecution and imprisonment for his faith.  When I think of all Paul faced and persevered through because of his faith and service to God, I feel guilty for all the worrying I do.  The guilty feelings don’t automatically erase my natural tendency to worry, but they do remind me that I need to pray my way through my worries and make a conscious and consistent effort to refocus my mind and heart on God’s grace and mercies and put my faith in Him.

I leave you with a quote by George Muller, a preacher from a another generation.  “The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith.  The beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.”