Across the Room ~ A Friday Find

Sitting in my favorite chair...watching some episodes of the Bible on Netflix...I looked up across the room.  On the piano sits a clay pot...not unlike what might have been carried to the well for water in Bible times.

This pot is faded, cracked, and has been broken in two and sealed back together. Still usable.  Ed and I had this pot at the front of the church at our wedding...representing our lives with our past mistakes, hurts, wounds, pain.  Our brokenness.  I noticed that the rose I had saved and dried from Ed's mother's gravesite when she died in April had been placed inside of one of the cracks.

And I found beauty in it all...

I rediscovered and was reminded that it is through the challenges, the interruptions, the hurts, the darkness, the losses that we are changed.  It is the stress and heat of these things that refine and conform us into God's desire for us.

Pain and loss...loneliness and despair...are all part of loving and living.  And miracles happen when we choose to trust the One who has all under control.

The greatest opportunities I have had in this life to glorify Him have been a result of my most desperate seasons.

God miraculously restores us to let His beauty shine from our rubble. He uses us in spite of us.

That is a great find!  (Linking up with Kim's Friday Finds.)

This Just In...The Battlefield of the Mind - Day 6

I hate to break it to you...but...the term, "no pain, no gain" is true...

I'm no expert on physical training, but I do know that the only way to build muscle is by pushing through resistance...

Ever start to work out and the next day you are S-O-R-E? Through persevering through the resistance, the muscle fibers are torn, and through the healing process the muscle is stronger than before.

In the early 1990s, the most expensive experimental failure known as Biosphere 2. Eight individuals were to live 24 months (September 26, 1991 - September 26, 1993) in an enclosed controlled mini-earth including a rain forest, an ocean, a coral reef, a fog desert, a savannah grassland, a mangrove wetland, human habitat, and an area for agriculture.

They found that the plants and trees grew faster, but they bent over; the wood was softer than they would if they were in their regular environment. WHY? No wind...no resistance...resulting in weak and immature trees. 

I Peter 5:10 (NLT) reads:

In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation.

In our minds, when things become tiring, chaotic, even catastrophic...we are so vulnerable to the enemy and can be tested severely. We can become negative, complaining and ungrateful.

What I need to remember is that God uses all things for MY good and for HIS purpose. He is more interested in my refinement than my comfort.

If ever anyone had the mother of all battles of the mind in the Old Testament, it was Job, who God allowed him lose everything and gave Satan full reign to tempt him to curse God. But what did Job say?

But He knows the way that I take; when I have been tested, I shall come forth as gold.

Job 23:10 (NIV)

While I may be writing this to you, I am saying this to myself...as I so need to hear it.

Nothing comes into my life that does not sift through His hands first.

I am grateful for that assurance...

Remembering God's Mercies While Hurting...Part I

Sunday was devastating!  Church was wonderful...time with my husband out shopping for new polos and oversized T-shirts for my son, Caleb.  Have I told you about him?  That would take a separate blog alone!  But let me try...briefly.



Caleb, named after Caleb of the Bible who chose to stand in the minority and about whom God said, "has a unique spirit and serves me wholeheartedly," is 23 years old, has severe/profound autism, nonverbal, functions at an 18-month level, and lives in a group home with 3 others; it is also staffed 24/7.  He has extroadinarily high  needs of environmental controls, structure, behavioral programming, and predictability in order for him to be safe, content, and functioning...equating to the best life for him as possible.

Very often on Sundays, we get Caleb and take him to his favorite place - McDonald's - and go for rides in the country.  But this past Sunday, going to the group home, I was flooded with pain, hurt, and anger...as so many of the basics with regard to staff providing care responsibilities had been totally neglected and the competence of staff was very questionable.  In truth, except for one staff person where I am sure the issue is competence, the true issue is laziness.



So...how do I find the gifts or look for the mercies of God when I am blinded by righteous indignation that Caleb, dependent for full assistance with everything, is not served with the dignity and the quality of life he is entitled to?  Well, stay tuned, as my next entry will show you how this was possible and how God incredibly reminded me of His providence and gracious mercy in the middle of my hurt.

With gratitude,