Tuesday, October 15, 2013

When Destiny Doesn't Make Sense

I turned 36 a few days ago and one of my Facebook posts stated that I am 36 but I feel 26.  Some of my oh-so-kind Facebook friends said that I look anywhere between 18 and 26.  Truthfully, I do feel much younger than my birth certificate says I am and that is a wonderful thing.  The reality is God has graced me to be more vibrant and full of life than I have ever been.  Perhaps as I am getting older, I am actually "mounting up with wings as eagles" and "running and not growing weary, walking and not fainting".  My husband says that when I reach 40 I will feel my age; the joints will start creaking and things will start hurting and I won't move as fast.  What he doesn't know is that I am praying that he will actually feel like I do instead of me feeling like he does.  I want him to have vitality and strength and health.

We have a beautiful home to move into in a few weeks, and there is so much more to life than creaking through it, hoping for Heaven.  I definitely don't want us to live out the rest of our earthbound days with that mentality.  Why should we?  I don't believe that is God's best for anybody.

This morning, I turned on my computer at home and began finishing up another chapter in my next book.  It has taken me some time to begin writing about Esther and the process she went through to live out her greatest destiny.  This Bible character is my favorite person to study in biblical history.  The Old Testament book that was named for her is so significant in my life, dating back to age 17 when someone mysteriously wrote the name on a t-shirt at a camp, describing me.  I never found out who wrote it, but even then I had long held the suspicion that she was someone that had lived a life that I was born to live too.  Even back then, I knew that my name might as well had been Esther for the significant journey my life was destined to take.

So this morning, I sat at my dining room table with my laptop, tapping away.  And the thought came to me that while she may not have known the direction her life was going when it was falling apart, God had a plan for her...not just for her people using her, but a plan for her.  Of course, there is always a big-picture scenario in everyone's life.  We all have a role to play in the whole scheme of things. But privately, individually, separately we also have plans for our own lives.  God has something planned on the horizon. And it's not just for someone else.  It's for you and me too.

Esther was raised as an adopted daughter to her cousin when her parents died.  She ultimately had a heritage that was salvaged.  But she could have ended up as a beggar in the street.  She could have ended up without a place to call home.  God had a better plan for her - a plan that not only included adoption, but also included a home in a palace and a role as a queen over 127 provinces.  Her life had value and that value was much bigger than she may have realized.  That is what I believe God wants for all of us: to finish the process and live our best life, destiny on purpose.  We may not understand why our paths have to go the directions they go or why we have to overcome so much pain and loss at times, but there is more to fulfillment than we even know.  We don't have to have all the answers.

We just need to develop trust in God - more and more everyday.  Sometimes He asks us to trust Him in the craziest ways and through the craziest times in our lives, when everything seems to be falling apart.  Two years ago when I thought I had lost love for good, God had a greater plan and today, I am married to a king and moving into a palace.  God knew my destiny even when I didn't...especially when I didn't know it or where I would end up.  But I have learned, if nothing else, that that is the point of the process for each of us.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Home

It has taken me a while to write a new blog post, which is really not abnormal for me.  Sometimes I wait.  It isn't for lack of things to write about.  Believe me...I am always writing (even if it is in my head and not down on paper or typed on a computer screen).

At any case, it has taken some time to write because there is the sense that once I tell this story, the story of my life with Mr. now, I won't be able to stop.  But now, it's really a matter of using this venue to "brag on God".  At some point in all our lives, we have to give honor where honor is due.  What's more, we have to realize that the One that created us has a definite plan for our lives and it is up to us individually to obey the course of those plans - even when those same plans make little to no sense whatsoever.

My husband and I spent the last few months searching for a home, walking in crazy faith to find that home that would be the place where our children (and perhaps other children that need a safe place and the love we can give) can call home.  That home was out there.  I knew it, and I wanted my husband to believe with me.  It was hard sometimes to get him to see that God had the perfect home for us.  It didn't matter if in the natural sense there was no possible way that all the elements would line up, if we had very little to spend on a house, if we had made some mistakes individually and collectively before.  There was a home for us, specifically for us, and that house is part of the plan for our lives.

How do you live in the realm of faith?  How do you exist in that place where all odds are against you and the truth is hard to see because the facts don't line up?  How do you believe God's command to move forward when it makes more sense to stand still and put down tent pegs where you are?

This move toward a home, a territory, a place for us, a generational blessing for these children that are waiting to be born here was not my idea.  I was scared to death to step out here.  It felt right in my spirit but wrong to my flesh, to my finite mind.  It didn't make sense.

But I have learned that few things in life ever do...the things worth stepping out in faith for don't ever make a whole lot of sense.

The day Mr. signed the last line on the documents sealing the deal, the Unites States Government went into shut-down mode.  And then everything began to make sense.  And then the topic of this first blog post for October 2013 came to mind.

The shutdown that we are not existing in, no matter whose fault it is or for how long, caused many families to be placed in the position of having to wait for the homes that they were seeking government-backed mortgages for.  There is no possible way I could have known that.  All I knew, all I insisted on when Mr. and I debated back and forth about the wisdom of finding a home RIGHT NOW, is that God said move NOW.  The words I kept returning to in my duct-taped Bible were the stories of Abraham moving in faith toward a home he had not seen and did not have a clear picture of and the offspring of Abraham going in to possess the land generations later.  There was no such thing as renting the promise land; there was ownership.

The urgency was much bigger than even our parents realized.  They wanted to be supportive but did not understand why we were "moving so fast".  They wondered if we would bite off more than we could chew in buying a house when our marriage wasn't even a year old.

All I knew was the process of moving forward, and my husband made the decision to do what needed to be done.  I have never been more in awe of him than when he finally trusted that God had spoken to me about the next move for our family - even when it didn't make sense.  My husband trusted God, but he also trusted me like the husband trusted his wife in Proverbs 31.

God knew that this was shutdown was going to happen.  He knew it all the way up until the date of October 1.  And the same day that others were shut out of their dreams (even if on a momentary basis), we were able to advance in faith.  Our God knows the times and the seasons of this earth; it is up to us that love and believe Him to trust that He can lead us into a goodly land, that He can lead us home.



There is a gray house with blue shutters on a quiet street where we will live.  Our children's school is behind the woods that border our property.  They will walk to school and have friends in that neighborhood.  These children will have the home I wasn't able to have physically, but did have spiritually.  Our children are in line for a generational blessing.  And really, it isn't about the house at all.  It's about the blessing that has traveled down both my husband's and my bloodlines.

But this home is not just for our birth children.  There are others that will be impacted by the little gray house with blue shutters and the love emanating from the very walls.  There are lives that will be touched by the books written in that house and the pictures painted in that house and the music composed in that house.  There are relationships with the God that led us to that house which will be built there.  My babies will learn about God in that house, like I learned about God in my grandparents' house 35 years ago.

And to me...that is what the faith was for.  That is what the pressing forward toward a dream was for.  That is what the true blessing is for.