woes or wows



            It is that time of year when we all take a look backwards and reflect on the year we have had. My initial response is to wave good bye to 2012 and slam the door so it can’t follow me. Let’s just say it has been a rather challenging year.
            However, when I look at all the perceived negative events of the year they are more than laced with God’s blessings to get me through. Maybe you have heard the saying “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle; I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.” There have been several times this year when I questioned God’s opinion of my strength. Yet, how often do I question his strength? Revelation time:  It isn’t my strength, without him I have no strength whatsoever. God daily provides me with strength.
            I’m pretty confident that if I shared all the woes from my year, the average person would concur, it was not pretty. What I’d rather share are the wows from this year.
My daughter began the year paralyzed from MS, is now walking and living a pretty normal life. (There are a great many wows that go with my daughter’s story – maybe another time)
My sister received a diagnosis of the big C, but it was in her thyroid, the easiest cancer to repair.
My Mom had a major fall that resulted in some big life changes for all of us (mostly my sister, thank you Wendy) but I have a greater appreciation for the fact that our days are numbered and as a result, I spend more time with my mom than I did previously.
There have also been extended family events and health issues but these have all worked to draw us all closer together and hold each other up.
            These are only a few of the wows in my life. The amalgam of wows boil down to the fact that every direction life took me this year, God was there, his hand was upon us and it was more than a little evident. God always provides, ALWAYS. It may not be in a way we desire or expect but it is always the right way.
            So, as you do your year in review wherever you have a woe, look for a wow, I bet you can find it. Praise God for the abundant blessings. God bless the year to come!
Posted by

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How are you?

Image
            When I wake, one of the first things I do is say, “Good morning God!” Some days are more enthusiastic than others. When I greet another human being, I usually follow that greeting with, “how are you?” This morning it occurred to me that I don’t ask God how he is. I have been contemplating this idea, how are you God? Obviously, given his attributes of omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience it is easy to follow the train of thought that he has everything in check. Despite that; I think of him in human terms and I can’t help but feel he is; not mad but disappointed (cringe). When he looks at creation, like a parent gazing on the wreckage of a kid’s toy room, wouldn’t there be disappointment?             As I contemplated that, my meandering mind led me to consider guilt. The guilt that leads to the disappointment of others. Every culture I have known lays claim to guilt; Lutheran guilt, Catholic guilt, Jewish guilt, Italian guilt and so on. Truth be told, we’re all guil
Read more

Out of the Mouth

Image
  Genesis 3:14 “God said to Moses, ‘I AM who I AM.’ This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I Am has sent me to you.”             I feel the need to make a disclaimer statement up front as I can see what I will write in these next few sentences could be misconstrued. This writing is not claiming that man is God although I will say, that if you have claimed the Holy Spirit lives in you, that identifies that God is in you too.             How many times a day do you use the phrase “I am…”? Probably much more than you or I realize. This is how God identified Himself to Moses. “I AM who I AM” We often refer to God as the great I AM, which He is. Going back to how often we use the phrase, for myself those two words are often followed with denigrating words like; so stupid, so foolish, so dumb, so angry, so hurt, so fill in the blank. What if each time we thought about those two words and how we identify ourselves we replaced “I AM” with “God is” most of us (I make this assumptio
Read more

Masterpiece

Image
              As a young person, I was fond of painting, not great at it but reasonable. I set it aside when I fell in love and got married. In these days of isolation I needed to find some other ways to occupy myself other than baking and decided to get back to my paint brushes.   To get used to handling the brushes again I got myself a paint by number,             If you have never tried one of these let me give you a little insight. You receive a canvas with an image divided up into numbered areas and little pots of paint with corresponding numbers. Then you begin a sort of scavenger hunt trying to fill in all the spots of a particular number. Sounds simple enough, however some of these areas are so tiny they are easily overlooked. The tiny spots are important though, they give that little flourish that can draw the eye or round out an object.             Why do I tell you about this? As I dove into this project, a great life analogy was revealed to me and I do love a good word
Read more