True faith believes God has our best interests in mind, whether or not his answers align with our desires.
Source: The Most Difficult Prayer
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The Hope I Cling To
In the end, it’s true, “In this world, we will have trouble.” But Jesus also said, “take heart! I have overcome the world.” That’s the hope I cling to.
Source: When Storms Roll In
Photo Credit: Cloudy Sky Across The Horizon | Flickr – Photo Sharing!
When Storms Roll In
It was one of THOSE days today. The kind where darkness threatens to descend and overtake any hint of joy. Where I’m tempted to let the blanket of discouragement douse out the flicker of hope.
I’ve been writing a lot about trials lately, but quite honestly it seems I’ve been in the clear for a few months. After a long rollercoaster season of ups and downs, I’ve come to the point where I can see clearly enough to write encouragement from a higher perspective. It’s not that it’s been an easy year, in particular, just a less afflicted year.
Then came some discouraging news, a new wave of challenges brewing on the horizon. I guess I’m not off the hook, after all. Didn’t Jesus say, “in this world, we will have trials”? Yet when they come, we’re tempted to throw those OTHER promises in his face—the lighter, easier ones that don’t deal with suffering. “Why have you forsaken me?” we cry, forgetting it’s not him who’s forsaken us.
Maybe, in the end, it’s us who’ve forsaken his word, looking to it only for the promises of ease and comfort. We accuse God of giving us a stone when we asked for bread, not remembering the word that declares God a loving father who gives his children what they need. It’s a matter of how we see each gift he gives.
When his precious daughter Rachel was killed in the 1999 Columbine massacre, Darrel Scott talked about developing “see through” vision. When it seemed he’d been handed a stone, he was determined to see through his awful tragedy to the good that could come from it. He devoted his life, and his daughter’s memory, to bring blessing in the midst of evil.
I can’t say I’ve yet encountered anything near as tragic as Darrel Scott and his family, but I can say his sentiments about “see through” vision have kept me over the years through the various trials I’ve encountered. I’m learning to take what’s given me and see that God can take even the most hopeless of circumstances and bring forth life.
In the end, it’s true, “In this world, we will have trouble.” But Jesus also said, “take heart! I have overcome the world.” That’s the hope I cling to.
“Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10)
Photo Credit: Rainy Skies on the Horizon | Flickr – Photo Sharing!
The Power of Words
Words have the power to free and encourage, strengthen and uplift. If our words are to gain such power, we must go through many difficulties to bring them to birth.
Source: The Writer’s Burden
Photo Credit: File:Butterflies looks like flower.jpg – Wikimedia Commons
The Writer’s Burden
It’s hard to write when the heart is heavy. Hard, but therapeutic. There’s something freeing about weaving thoughts into words. I’ve often said I don’t know what I really think about something until I get it down on paper.
And so in the pain and confusion that so often is life, I’m grateful for pens and journals and computer keyboards. Even though I just spent a half hour pouring my heart out on this topic and the computer deleted every last word. Ugh. Admitted, I attempted to strangle my computer after the fact. Not so therapeutic.
Anyhow, I’ve found that writers are called to bear burdens. One is called modern technology, but that’s the least of them. Often, we’re called to walk through valleys long before anyone else gets there—just so they won’t be alone once they do.
When Moses was called to lead a nation of former slaves through the wilderness, he asked for help from a man named Hobab, telling him, “Please do not leave us. You know where to camp in the wilderness, and you can be our eyes.” This man had been through the wilderness, and now his calling would be to help others make their way through.
Every burden we’re called to bear endows us with strength and wisdom to help others when they encounter similar trials. Each of us has been entrusted with a gift of suffering in whatever form it comes, which enables us to lighten the burden for others when they walk under the heaviness of life’s trials.
This is true for everyone, but I find it to be true for writers in particular. Words have the power to free and encourage, strengthen and uplift. If our words are to gain such power, we must go through many difficulties to bring them to birth. In the end, it will be worth it, if even one life is changed as a result.
Photo Credit: Free stock photo: Valley, Mountains, River, Stream – Free Image on …
Weathering the Whethers of Life
I try not to complain about the weather. Really, I do. But I must admit that where I live, it’s hard to keep a positive outlook. The other day, while walking to work, I had that fleeting thought, “Maybe we should just move somewhere warm and sunny.” I’m sure that’s not a rare thought among those who live in a place where spring temperatures can plummet below zero and above 100 degrees in a matter of hours.
The seasons supposedly turned from winter to spring back in March. Since then, it’s felt like deep midwinter on most days, and the dog days of summer on others. Through it, the refrain of an old poem I once learned comes to mind, “Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not, we’ll weather the weather whatever the weather, whether we like it or not.”
As much as the weather out here tends to frustrate even the most grateful of souls, I know deep down that I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I love being where I can watch winter melt into spring, spring burst into summer, summer drift into fall, and fall transform into winter. We Midwesterners get to enjoy the best (and worst!) of every season, and we’re stronger for it.
Life in the land of unchanging seasons would be boring, and I imagine we’d start taking the sun for granted. Not so, here. Never a dull moment in the realm of weather, and we most definitely appreciate our sunny days.
It’s much the same in life. Circumstances pass through our lives like the seasons, breathing hot or cold, rainy or windy, icy or breezy. We see life at its best, and life at its worst, and we’re stronger for it. Hard times till the soils of our hearts, birthing gratitude.
Much as I don’t like change or hardship, I’ve learned to see the beauty in it. Just as there’s beauty and purpose in every season, there’s beauty and purpose for everything that comes to our lives, good or bad. A change in perspective helps us to see through the trying times to the blessings that will come as a result. To embrace the different seasons of life is to cultivate joy.
Photo Credit: Through the Seasons-Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer | Flickr – Photo …
(Not) Photoshopped
Confession: on multiple occasions I’ve been tempted to ask my tech-savvy husband to photoshop my pictures. And on a couple of occasions, I’ve almost followed through. Though my husband is expert in all things graphic design, I wouldn’t have been happy with the results save for the red-eye removal. I’d rather be real than photoshopped.
Still, I hate having my picture taken and only do it now to preserve memories for my children. My sister was always the photogenic one, with the perfect smile. It takes about a hundred shots for me to take a decent picture, and even then I only like the ones where my super-cute kids draw attention away from me.
Even now the only profile pictures I use consist of me and my kids. My preferred gravatar shows only my face, but if there were space to pan out you’d see that I’m holding my daughter. The day my husband took the picture, we’d gone to take some professional family photos with my in-laws. None of the professional pictures turned out, but the one my husband took is among the few photos I like of me because it captures a moment of genuine contentment and joy—not fake and forced as in a photo shoot.
Maybe my aversion to selfies is a result of pride, not wanting my flaws on permanent display in photo format. Or maybe I only like the ones with my kids because I’m most relaxed and real when with them. In those pictures, I’m laughing, joyful, genuine, not posed. They make me feel beautiful.
Yes, I’m content with how God made me. But I realize it’s who he’s made me that determines beauty. As the Bible says, beauty doesn’t come from external things, as the world would have us believe. It comes from the heart. My children make me feel beautiful because I know I’ve sacrificed for them, and would give my life for them if needed. They’ve seen me at my best and at my worst, and they love me still. They’ve seen me in my most real, most raw moments—unphotoshopped, and somehow find the beauty in it. And that’s how God sees me, too, because he looks beyond the surface and into my heart.
Photo Credit: Free stock photos of analog camera · Pexels
This Life & Beyond 
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