... but how New Years have changed!
Beyond the need of the Word, I've just ordered a couple of books that I hope will give insight into where this new person God is shaping is going, after I find out who she is! Sounds confusing coming from me... believe me, I know. The one who teaches many women to answer the '3 W's" in life," Whose am I? Where am I? Why am I?'... or where women should go to "fill their emotional tank", or how to welcome and embrace the "refining fire of a wonderful God"! Every time I have taught in the last months, a voice has said, "Listen to your own teaching! It applies to YOU!" The extremes of emotion I've been experiencing the last 6 months, if placed on a graph, might elicit quick decisive action to institutionalize me ( alright, so I exaggerate... maybe...) from those other than the "mid life growth" crowd (I deliberately chose the word growth to try to spin positive about it... :0) ). One thing that has been of comfort is that those friends who are also in "growth", are expressing like things... and today I'm recording some of where I am, though still afraid to expose it, and fully confident there's more to discover. The one difference is that all of my friends with an empty home, have a spouse to go with them, or to hold them up, in this passage... a cord of 3 strands is not easily broken! Yet, I'm old enough to know that relationships are such that this is not always of benefit. And, for some reason, the best plan is for me is to do it alone. It is not the first time I find myself at a place of not liking me, wanting to hide for fear I'll "break" something or someone... because I don't know what is seeping to the top for exposure. But most of my days, I had a loving encourager beside me..I remember an old pastor I heard on a radio back in Hawaii days... " The greatest compliment God can pay us is when He stokes the fire." Again I'm at the place where I lift my heart and beg for no more compliments!
It really does boil down to embracing this passageway as shaping the woman God is creating... a woman that will not or cannot be created without the pain and transition I am asked to weather. I've done it before, with Him. Guess one could call it His painful grace... a grace that won't quit growing His loved... because of the reward of becoming more like Him, even here, no especially here on earth. But what is it about me that it can't be achieved without pain?
Grace... hmm... wonderful, yes... easy life, no...
Some things don't change, like grace...
... the New Years do...
