"Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us."
(Ecclesiastes 7:3)
Sometimes we don't realize we are desperate for God until it seems that we have nothing left to hold onto. Sometimes we think "My life is good! I'm doing great! I am so blessed!" We think that because everything in our physical world is fine that we don't need God. It is only when our whole world is falling apart that we cry out to God "Help me! NOW!" I asked God at the beginning of this year to do whatever He had to to make me realize that all I needed was Him....He did and it has been amazing.
It has undoubtedly been too long since I last blogged about my life. It is incredible to read my last entry from January of this year. A few weeks after that post the Lord began to work in my heart and started refining me in ways I had never dreamed He would. While I was still at school my mother was put in the hospital for heart problems. At first, I was scared but I trusted the Lord and knew He had a reason and that He would take care of my mom. After a few weeks she was diagnosed with high blood pressure and an irregular heart beat. I thanked the Lord. A few weeks later my mother informed me that the doctor's had found cancer on my grandmother's lung. Later that week she went in for a lung biopsy and never woke up. The doctors couldn't explain why but she had a stroke while in a coma and her brain just started to deteriorate day after day. I thought to myself "I know the Lord has a reason....but what?" My dad called me at school and told me I should come home because we didnt know how much longer she had. I'll never forget walking in that hospital room and seeing her there, hooked up to all those machines, and my mom........her face...it was this kind of hurt and brokeness that I knew I couldnt repair or make better. So much crying. I literally felt like I just would never stop crying. I remember trying to fall asleep and just hearing faint cries in the background, wondering when people would stop. I told the Lord "I can not do this. You have to make this all go away. You have to make them stop crying. You have to fix this!" That night in the hospital I read Isaiah 41:10&13 which says,
"Fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
For I, the LORD your God,
hold your right hand;
it is I who say to you, “Fear not,
I am the one who helps you.”
I didn't know how He was going to do it, but I had no other option but to trust Him or fall apart. I started literally crying out to God, and it may sound strange but I felt so close to Him in those moments....closer than I've ever felt Him before. I just knew He was there."God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." (Psalm 46:1) Someone told me once that instead of praying that He would take the trial away, to pray that He would help you see what He was trying to teach you instead. Slowly He began to do wonders in my life and in my family's lives. He was teaching me the urgency of telling people about Christ. I kept remembering all those people in the hospital....so many of them in their final days. So many loved ones hurting and nothing to hold onto...nothing to keep them going. I was thinking, if I hurt that much for people I didn't even know, how much did His heart hurt?
He was slowly healing each and every one of our hearts in different ways. Teaching us different things through my Nana's death. It took some of us longer than others, and I don't think that the death of a loved one is something you just get over and forget about, but God is good and He helps us get through the wilderness and over the mountains...........only sometimes to be faced with more.
A month later, I experienced heartbreak, and the Lord was teaching me that I can not find true satisfaction and meaning in a man....or people for that matter. But, "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." (Psalm 34:18) I found myself telling the Lord " Alright, I've got nothing left in me. I am broken and all I want and all I need is You. Father, help me." I had signed up to go on a Missions Trip to the Dominican Republic a cpl months earlier and had forgotten about it with all the ....well.... life. I hadn't sent out support letters and the deadline was coming up quick. I just simply prayed in my heart that if God wanted me to be on that trip that He would provide...and boy did He! It was the coolest feeling, this peace in my heart, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was God's will, He wanted me on that trip.
The Academic school year was coming to an end and we all were gearing up for Summer Camp. I was scared to death to be a counselor! Every day I woke up that summer I didn't know how I was going to do it. But the Lord equipped me each day for the task at hand. "...For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." (Philippians 2:13) Summer camp brought me to a place I had never been before, put me in situations where I had no idea what to do but fall on my face and cry out to God, and I was so tired and spent that I had nothing to give of myself but only what He supplied me each day. It was awful but wonderful, frustrating yet peaceful, and altogether exactly how He wanted it. :)
Before I knew it, I was in the slums of the Dominican Republic, witnessing to children and teens who kept saying that they would worry about their salvation when they got older; they just wanted to have fun right now. How familiar that sounded. Isn't that what everybody thinks? I was so sad when I left and I wanted to go back immediately but graduation was coming up in a matter of days. I tried to sort through all the emotions I was feeling but it was not happening that quick. The next thing I knew I was saying goodbye to so many dear friends, not knowing when or if I would ever see them again. And then to top it all off I was trying to figure out where God wanted me next!
God brought me home and gave me a job where I could minister to people who knew nothing of Christ's love and that was a refining process all in it's own. Going from somewhere where you are submersed in God's Word daily and surrounded by people who love God, to being plunged back into the world where people hate God and you have a job and you have to work at making time with the Lord. All in all, I've gone through a lot of stuff since I last wrote, but through all of that God revealed more and more about Himself to me, and that my friends is all my heart truly desires.....to know my Creator, my Father, my King, my Savior and to grow in His grace more and more each day. ♥
