Joy in the Journey

It is time...to begin my blog. I am excited and apprehensive about putting my thoughts out there into the blogesphere (don’t even know if this is word, just sounds “right”). In response to my passion for encouraging women, I take my first steps. I hope you’ll come along too and benefit from what you read here. I am not an intellectual or a particularly gifted person. But I am willing and and able to share through the written word what God is doing in my life, has done, and promises He will do. That is what I am about and how He works in my life. He seems to continue revealing himself to me through my life circumstances and then opens the doors for me to share and offer comfort and encouragement to others going through similar circumstances as He has lavishly comforted and encouraged me. My life verse is 2 Cor. 1:3-5 and time and again He proves this to be true. I continually marvel at how he ushers me through a difficult circumstance, offering comfort and hope through his word. Then once I’m through it, opportunities arise to share the life lessons with others and offer encouragement. 

I just returned from a wonderful visit over coffee with my good friend whom I’ll call Mary. She is an inspiration to me in so many ways, but in particular by her great faith and trust in God’s provision for her and her family and to everything she sets her hands to. She is a woman of prayer and it is from this intimate trusting relationship with the Father that she gains her strength of character and knowledge of the truth. I am defining truth here as the knowledge of God’s Word. Mary knows it and shares it with others. When you visit with her you get a sense that every area of her life has been taken to the throne of grace. That is the kind of women I want to be and what I want people to say of me. I fall short most of the time.

But we were chatting this afternoon about how often we run into Moms of high schoolers who are facing the imminent empty nest stage, soon to experience a void in the home and anxiety as the empty nest faces Mom as a reality. I went through this same worry this past year as my youngest went off to college. We pour so much into our children as they grow through the years. What is life to be without putting their needs and demands first in our lives?  But we both agreed, my friend and I, that we worried much more than we had needed to and that the next season we were entering brought sweet surprises that were hidden earlier until the time was right to discover them. Our fretting was for naught. And isn’t this so often the case in life? If only I could remember this the next time a new season is upon me. I hope I do! Psalm 139:15-16 speaks of God’s complete knowlege and understanding of all that we are going through. “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” He knows and he cares and that is what I wanted to share with you today.