Making my way through the gray.

Last night I found myself desperately searching for the light at the end of the tunnel.  Man,  this thing called life can just be downright hard sometimes.

Hope seems to run away from you and you find yourself trying to catch it like a game of "got you last!"

One by one it seems that lives change around me and yet I feel like I'm standing still...just watching.

I don't want to live in mediocrity. I don't want to be the "blah" feeling I suffered from the past couple days.

I want to be filled with passion, filled with joy and on fire for the Lord.

Many days I do feel that fire but other days I am like a flickering candle that can barely stay lit in the breeze. I am flimsy, I am weak, I am dim.

Why do I let things steal my joy and happiness so easily?

I apologize for my depressing rant...self pity is a slippery slope and I decided to jump on it yesterday. It gets better, I swear. 

This morning I am reminding myself that everything is not as "bad" as I sometimes like to make it seem. 

A couple weeks ago I was reading an article on Amy Copeland.  For those of you who don't know who she is - she is the young Christian woman who recently contracted a rare flesh-eating bacteria  from a cut on her leg. She has lost at least one of her legs, part of her abdomen and I want to say her hands (but you can double check the facts online). 

Anyway, I read a quote from her, and her attitude and outlook on life blew me away. This is what she said: 

“...I am blessed to have the opportunity to experience something that not many other people have the chance to experience. I am blessed to be able to have a challenge that not many others get to have. I am blessed to have the capacity to share my experience with others and have a chance to improve the quality of someone else’s life. I’m blessed to be different.”

Wow, that is humbling.  This is coming from a girl who just lost several body parts, functions, and almost her life but she is celebrating the fact that God chose her to be different and go down a different path.  

While my circumstances are much different and far less severe than hers - when I read that, I felt a reminder of what I wrote in this post, when I said that while sitting in church one day, I felt thankful for being chosen for this road. 

 Dark days may come and I may want to give up, but there is always always a light at the end of the tunnel.  I heard a quote from an online sermon I was listening to by Holly Furtick and she said, "What seems to be like the most pointless or even painful waiting room may be God's most productive workroom."  There is so much truth to that statement and I am learning that first-hand.

This morning I must remind myself that God has chosen me for something different, to do His work and hopefully to encourage others as I go along.  I may never know exactly "why" until I get to talk to the Lord in person some day, but that's not the point. The questions right now are "what? and how?".  What can I learn from all of this? How can I use this to glorify God? What does God want to reveal to me through this? How can I use this to grow in my walk with the Lord and become the woman God longs for me to be?

So while my life may not  be where I thought it would 5 years ago, I must trust this path the Lord has me on. He is not like me - He doesn't get lost easily or just blindly pick a path and move forward.  His plans are greatly orchestrated and specific for each and every one of us!  Isn't that comforting? He has a plan for you, a specific one - not one that is left up to chance. I will steal a line from my sister Kimmy's song: "Oh what a beautiful web He weaves."  So true~ He really does have a beautiful plan for our lives.  While it may not make sense to us right now, there is a greater work being done.  I trust that and I choose to trust Him.  He has never let me down.