Without a Map

SO…you know that feeling when something is ripped away from you? Something you love, something you fought for, something you thought was yours? Then…it’s gone?

You don’t realize how much it meant, how much it was a part of you until it is torn from you unexpectedly, like someone ripping a map out of your hands and you are left standing on the corner unsure if you should keep moving forward or turn back the way you came.

It is times like these that I wonder if God makes mistakes. I had a God ordained plan for myself, or so I thought. Everything was ready, falling in to place. My life was finally going to be smooth sailing into a peaceful calm after months and months of transition and turmoil.

                

The calm never came. Life became harder. This is a mistake. Someone has messed up God’s plan, because this wasn’t it.

Everything within me urged to give up and start over. It was time to let go and move on because things were hard and didn’t turn out like I thought they would. The world had failed me.

This is the time to surround yourself with a wall of pillows to protect you from the outside while you lose yourself in your favorite movie about people who had lives with the happy ending you long for. After all that is was Moses and David and Paul did when life wouldn’t let up in the midst of a storm.

Except that’s not true. When things get harder there is complaining and a little doubt, but when your life belongs to the Lord, it is Hid strength you hold on to, not your own.

I have had a difficult few months in which I feel I have been fighting a losing battle. I am hurt and I feel as though things have been taken from me. I have been through a fire and have wanted to stop and give up. It is in these times that Jesus has gently whispered to me that this is a beautiful time.

He is all I have left. In this fire I can choose to be burned or refined. It all depends on the material of which the vessel is made.

It is not easy. I have felt burned many times by life over the years, but those are the things that have made life beautiful. David’s battles made him ready to be King, while Moses was a refugee God prepared him to lead his people out of Egypt, Paul’s trials resulted in the writing of most of the New Testament.

I can take the fire and it will burn in my heart and consume me, or I can let God use it to make me ready for something greater. When the map gets ripped out of my hands, maybe God is telling me to look to Him, only Him. Sometimes it’s okay to be standing in the middle of the road with nowhere to go. Sometimes it’s the best place to be. It is where God will come to meet me and we will move forward together.