Serious Post #3

This is really crazy that I am posting already, and again a serious blog. It is actually other people's blogs that are inspiring this new side of me! I have had so much built up in me for the past few years and haven't really had a healthy release of emotions - and somehow blogging helps me sort out my crazy mind! :) I dedicate this post to good friends of ours that are going through a hard time.

I think the hardest reality that has hit me since being on my own is that life is hard - I mean REALLY hard. It's not that I necessarily had this fairy-tale idea of how my adult life was going to go - but my life has crossed over many unexpected, painful hurdles...and I have over and over tripped and fallen on my face. But God is always there picking me back up, and pointing me in the right direction. But sometimes I fight it and don't want Him to help me up - I want to stay angry and crying on the ground. I want the world to fade away and wake up in my dream world where there is no suffering - because sometimes I feel like every ounce of life is being squeezed right out of me. I don't have the strength to finish the race.

Everyone keeps saying that what we go through only makes us closer to God - but for me I have so much bitterness and anger inside that I feel, in many cases, it has pushed me further away. But God hasn't gone anywhere, and He is still the same God back when things were going great. So, I can only blame myself - because I have been trying to do everything on my own instead of laying my burdens at His feet. The reason: I don't want to live with this "thorn in my flesh" as Paul did in II Corinthians 12. This passage really hits home for me, and God definitely spoke to me today through these verses:

"Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (NIV)

I think God brings things into our life and yes, sometimes leaves them, as a reminder that we are human, and to keep us humble. The hard things I go through help me relate to other people, because I am not alone in my suffering! Like I said before, I don't have the strength to finish the race - but God designed it that way so that we can lean on HIM.

God picks us up when we fall, and He also surrounds us with a crowd of fans that have gone before us cheering us on to the finish line, and puts people right beside us so that we can help each other along the way.