The Journey...My Journey...The Path I Need Isn't Always the Path I Want

How does one describe when the journey with Him is constantly taking twists and turns...leading where you never expect and at every twist and turn there is one pothole after another?

For those of you who have read before, you know my journey has had ups and downs. The past few years have shown me things about myself that I don't like and things that I have realized are exactly everything I need to walk into the future of what He has for me.

There is a lot of emotions when you realize you have deeply hurt and caused fracture with the people you love most. There is a lot of growth and change that needs to happen to repair and become what they need you to be in their life and who you need to be as an individual trying to grow and honor Him. What I wasn't prepared for was how deeply the enemy would push at me and how much I would not be prepared and how much I would find myself falling back into the potholes that He had started to show me I needed to avoid.

The hills, the mountains, the valleys....they are all part of the journey, but it is the valleys you dig yourself that I struggle with the most. And the enemy knows this. Just as I find myself building stairs to pull myself out of the hole I dug, I find myself crashing back in and again, people are hurt, I am found broken and I am again asking Him to pull me through. Thankful, we serve a gracious and forgiving God who is never unwilling to teach me and pull me out of my own pit when I am too weak to get through it on my own.

I also have come to realize that when I ask Him to prune me, to grow me, to guide me to be more into His image that to grow, I have to face the things I don't want to. Overcome the things I wasn't prepared to and be willing to change. To ask Him for growth and then to fight Him is to not desire to be more than I am right now at all. It is being disobedient when He begins to show you where to be obedient. Growth isn't always about what I want it to be, what I need. Most of all it is what He needs.

This life wasn't promised to be easy. Following Him usually isn't. The difference is we have a hope and a promise that He will never leave us or forsake us. That He will be with us in the dark and that He will carry us when we can't carry ourselves. With Him, we are never alone.

I have lost things in the past few years that were most dear to me. I have damaged relationships that mean everything to me, by my own hand and because I didn't listen to what He wanted me to do. I have health issues that I have no control over and some that have no natural cure and worsen with time. This has caused financial strain, a career change that was not expected and a lot of "uncertainty".

BUT....

In the loss of those relationships, He has shown me avenues of healing and things I didn't even realize about myself that with Him, I can overcome, change and be more of who He created me to be and not a slave to lies, to bondage from my past and stop myself from digging my own potholes. He has also sent me people who aren't afraid to tell me what I need to hear and support me through the process. As He says in Colossians 3:12-15 "Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful." (esv).

In regards to my health, I know that He is Healer and that there is a plan and a purpose in all things. When the pain is overwhelming and the symptoms are more than I can physically handle, He has been there. As long as I seek, pray and look....He is there. Though the pain and symptoms may not ease, I am reminded that He is in the midst and that has to be enough because He is enough. As He says in Revelations 21:4 "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." (esv).

In regards to finances, well the uncertainty and the numbers on a page are enough to make anyone cringe, but He is Provider and I trust in that over numbers because He has moved before and I know He can move again. As He says in Matthew 6:26 "Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value then they?" (esv).

So I continue to journey. I continue to work, to seek, to pray, to grow...In the trials and in the joy I will be thankful. I know that some trials are necessary to be created more in His image and I know that some trials. some potholes are not of my own making. I will continue to do my best to not create my own potholes and look for more of the warning signs He puts in my path before I start the hole.

Most of all, I will trust in the One who has never failed me, even when I have failed Him.