It Must Be Amazing

Photos are of our wedding day, 7 years later, and at 24 years.

It is hard trying to figure out who I am now that Vinnie's gone. When we are married, we become one and after 25 years of marriage, tearing two who have become one apart is like taking the laminate layer off an old coffee table. It just doesn't want to all come off!

That is me...an old coffee table. Well, it seems that way at times, especially when it seems like I am going forward and I get stuck on an old piece of crud - cruddy laminate. Ever notice how people treat an old coffee table? We used to have one..all scoffed up, dented, and scratched. No one cared what they did to the table. We all dumped stuff on it because we didn't care if it got scratched up; it was already a mess. Well, it sure does seem like I have big old piles of junk get dumped on me these days. I take few steps forward and suddenly there's a big old pile of junk, the same old junk, dumped right down on my path, right on my head! Ouch! It hurts every time.

I was thinking the other day when more old junk got dumped on this old table, (me) that what ever it is I sense God calling me to do must be absolutely amazing! And as I was thinking that the other day, my friend sent me a copy of a devotion. It was from 1 Peter 5:8 "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. It seems like my enemy wants to devour me." He (the enemy) must know more about what God has in store than me than I do because he is sure working hard at holding me back!

But in my walk with the Lord over these past 14 years it has been proven to me that God's not usually just up to one thing when He is at work either. God only not only has me in a time of trial for His ultimate glory and my ultimate future ("Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him." James 1:12 - THAT doesn't sound like an old table, does it?!), but He is using the struggle of the trial to get me to see some patterns of my past - patterns that cannot come with me into the future! He's making it clear that much of the patterns of today's trials are the result of past sin. Sin is not always a deceitful, intentional wrong. Sin is when we just jump to conclusions and run ahead of God. We can't be too careful... EVERYTHING must be covered in prayer, even the seemingly "dadhh" moments...the "who needs to think twice about what to do here" moments. What scares me is that I wonder if I'll ever get that right! Scarier still is to think that if I don't get myself praying even about the little things that I think are just "no-brainers", I will keep getting hit in the face by it and bearing the heartbreak of not doing the right thing.

So while I am wrestling with God today to understand His will for tomorrow (literally for tomorrow), and repent of the things that were done yesterday, I am also kind of secretly excited to know that God has a plan for my life, a "plan to prosper and not harm, a plan of hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11) I can't help but wonder, with all the opposition I am getting in my efforts to move forward with my life, that what the enemy is prowling around trying to destroy me from doing must be amazing! I am praying for strength and great discernment to make choices and decisions in these difficult times according to what I believe God wants me to do, not out of guilt or manipulation that tends to entangle me, so that God can be honored and glorified, I can be set free from another layer of sin patterns, and move forward with God to the amazing days that He holds ahead of me.