growing...

this year has been quite a year.  between feeling helpless because the well-being of our oldest son felt threatened and between feeling helpless because of financial hardships caused by so many things but mostly the expenses related to having a child with special needs we have really felt the pressure of the vice of life.
every hardship has tested my faith in a new (and not exciting) way.  in the beginning i felt like i was simply trying to put my "faith" face on and scare the fear out of myself.  hoping that my faith would sustain me...not in whom my faith rested...but my actual faith.  i turned my faith into an idol.  weird.
i am still trying to figure that one out but it kind of reminds me of a person keeping a rabbit's foot in their pocket, searching for 4 leaf clovers, or putting a horse's shoe over the doorway.  my faith became all of these things for me.  i guess i will put faith in quotation marks from here on out when i write about it in reference to this situation because it wasn't real faith at all..."faith" was a clover.  the cross was belittled to nothing more than a trinket of superstition.  i hoped that my "faith" would keep me from any more hardship...that my "faith" would hold me afloat...or that if i could just have enough "faith" then i would lead a long a trouble free life.
when i re-think the days of calvary's evaluation and, specifically, the day we chose to medicate him i realize just how weak my true faith had been.  i just let the storm blow me away.
i am so grateful for being surrounded by people that ushered me right back to Jesus. i have learned so much through the faith lives of others....i have watched people weather times that are far tougher than my own storms with far more grace and what i have learned the most from my own experience and the experience of observation of others is that without true faith that God is in control of our lives we will not have the strength to weather many storms.
"for we walk by faith not by sight" 2 Corinthians 5:7
"for the things which are seen are temporal and the things which are unseen are eternal" 2 Corinthians 4:18.
in the midst of these trials this year two wonderful realizations have come into my life and into my heart of which i am quite certain i would have never experienced if it had not been such a challenging path:
1. my husband and i are undoubtedly suited for each other and i am unbelievably grateful for him and his heart.
2. the realization of what true faith is...i have learned what an act of discipline it is to choose faith over fear. not because my faith is bigger than my fear but because my God, in whom i have faith, is bigger than my fear.
with these two lessons i believe God has been shaping my husband and i to be prepared for anything...
i am learning what it means to trust Him with what i love most in this world; i am learning to trust God's provision...
the strange part is that when we began to see a light at the end of our tunnel i started to fear leaving the comfort of His shadow. i felt like a baby bird reluctant to leave the nest...i was worried that the character traits that have been refined over the past years would be lost once i no longer "needed" them. but, once again, dear friends reminded me that it is for such a time as this that we have gained our tools...2 Timothy 3:14-17 "but as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from who you have learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."
the trials in our lives are not meant to keep us held down or held back but meant to "fully equip" us for the work that is ahead...allowing myself to be afraid of stepping out in faith reminds me of the Israelites longing for the slavery of Egypt instead of suffering in the dessert and trusting that God had a plan for their time in that dessert. i know it is silly of them to choose slavery and i think how crazy they were not to trust God...yet, at every step i see more and more how very much parallel my experience is at the microcosmic level...
i am thankful for His patience with me because i am such a slow learner.
i know that i have so much more growth ahead and that is both exciting and terrifying; growth is not always easy (as evidenced by these past two years) but i would rather be growing in The Lord rather hiding in my fear or resting in my ignorance...

"...I'd rather scrub floors in the house of my God than be honored as a guest in the palace of sin" (Psalm 84:10)

after all, this life is truly such a sweet gift...