God is Surely Growing Your Girl

Growth hurts sometimes.  Sometimes He strips things away from us only to show us how powerful He is and how out of control we are.  At times He lets our hearts break, lets us be confused, allows us to feel lost only to have us release our grip on what we want and fall back at His feet.  I'm at his feet now, and the only pull I want to feel is that of His hand guiding down the path of His will.

This past year and a half have been... well, just about any adjective you can imagine.  Crazy, exciting, life-giving, tiring, frustrating, heart-breaking, lonely, nourishing, painful, etc... (See what I mean by any adjective!)  The path that Christ has led me on has been a wild journey.  The highs and lows of ministry, life, and love have not always been fun.  Sometimes, truth be told, it has sucked.  Yet, in the midst of that God has worked in my heart in amazing ways.

This past week, though our North Carolina trip and coming back home, God has truly opened my eyes to all that He has done and is doing in me.  I had a close friend come to me and commend and encourage me for the patience she sees me show with our girls. What!  That's a compliment I don't think I have ever received.  Only by God's grace because before, I have been known as one of the most impatient people alive.  He changes us.  Another friend recently told me, "Be careful in praying for patience, because He will put you in the middle of situations to really make you patient."  Prayers like this have been hard to pray but as I have prayed them, and been put in the middle of those growing situations (even through the extreme drama of my teen girls!), He is changing me.  Slowly but surely.

Surrender and Faith.  As a single woman, coming up on 25 years, I wonder what God has for this next phase of my life.  I have thought before that I had that figured out.  I tried to figure it out.  I fought to figure it out.  Yet I have been chiseled down to the ground by heartache and discontentment over the past year, only to have Christ chip away every last ugly piece of that in me.  I stand here today knowing that nothing, and as a woman waiting for a man to lead, TRULY nothing, I desire or fight for is going to happen unless the Lord puts that into play.  As I have reached this place of healing and peace, even over the past week, I see that God truly has this in control.  Restoration and progress happen when we rest in Him, allow Him to work in His timing, and enjoy what He lays out for us.