Looking back 10 years, life was very different. Fresh off my one-year sabbatical in Philadelphia, I was living in my own home for the first time, back in my home town. I had never felt the burden of some, to leave the town and make a start somewhere else.
However, I was probably as lonely as I had ever been. I had no goal in life and didn't really have any dreams. (I've always kept my expectations low to avoid disappointment!)
So, as I sit here now, with my two awesome kids watching TV next to me in the bed I share with my aslo awesome husband, I'm awestruck.
I could not have scripted the past 10 years, a journey that has taken me to 3 continents and brought some of the most special people I've ever met into my life.
Just the last 5 years, as many of you have been reading about, we have experienced things that many people will not, nor would they, want to experience. However I would not change a thing. There is not one hesitation in my being that I am in exactly the best and right place I could be. And for that I am so thankful.
Think back over the past 12 months with me...if I had been told or told you that Emma would be completely independent of the tube I doubt we'd have believed it. If you could have told me that I would go back to work part-time (loving it) and Scott's parents would be able to watch the kids - ridiculous. For Scott to be working as a foreman in a new company, where the future looks bright, I know he'd have laughed!
But, here we are. Life is good and when I stop to think about it, which I should do more often, it brings me so much joy. I really should stop and remember before I lose my patience over mess or laundry!!
It's so important to remember how God's ways are not our ways, and that He does things based on a big picture we do not see.
When Jesus came as a human baby, the most vulnerable of people, born to an unlikely, unwed, couple in a dirty, animal shelter, it was hardly the arrival many would have expected.
In the first couple years of His life, His family were exiled in order to save Him from the genocidal King Herod. And he spent 30 years preparing for His ministry - God did not send a "wham, bam" Savior who dropped in, gave the word and dropped out, back to His glorious throne in heaven.
Instead, Jesus lived among the poorest of people, under hostile government of the Romans, and hostility from his own religious leaders who did not like the talk of freedom from rules and a spirit of love (that would've robbed them of their control and power).
And when it came time to bring victory to the Kingdom of God over death, it was through assuming our place of cruel and degrading punishment, as a sacrificial lamb, that He conquered death and displayed His power. Not some display of visual might and glorification in front of men.
Although the prophets of the Old Testament did tell us, years before His coming, of these events, still many struggle to believe that this is the path that God has laid out for us to enter into eternity with Him.
I think most people believe there is a god, but if you want to believe that God is loving and actually does want you to go to heaven for eternity, surely you have to believe that the same God would so clearly tell you how you can do that.
Which begs the question, will you believe Jesus? (If you're not sure what Jesus said, maybe it's time to read it for yourself or get to a church that will tell you.) Don't leave it to chance, or even someone else to tell you, make sure you know your future.
