Thanksgiving on Thursday...

Recently I saw a huge lifting of a cloud of wrong that has hung in thick blackness over my life for the past 4 years. I stand in awe of a Father who orchestrates events, who gives and takes away and who teaches us to number our days and to apply our hearts unto wisdom~not in perfect or happy circumstances but through fire and flood, tears and sleepless nights.

I don't know why I had to walk through the valley I did. I don't know exactly why I had to experience the loneliness of the wilderness or the desert's burning sands, but I don't need to know. I just am so glad that I know Jesus.

This I do know:

God used it for major good in my life. I am deeply grateful that He has brought me to a new height of trust in Him and a new sense of His presence and all powerful, all wise, all knowing care of me.

I know that He taught me how to forgive like never before.
I know that He taught me to practice His presence in ways like never before.
I know that He taught me to bask in the sweet presence of Jesus and let that be enough when my heart was pained too deeply for mirth and song, and the burdens pressed and the cares distressed...
I know that He taught me to walk by faith and not by sight (and I will have to keep learning that, I'm sure, as the days and years go by).
I know that He provided for my needs above and beyond anything I could have ever asked or thought. I am  humbled as I count the ways He has done that!
I know that He taught me to care and be broken hearted over what breaks His heart in ways I have never known how before.
I know that He taught me to pray and earnestly plead for my friends who wander in confusion and embrace false teaching as truth for freedom and life.
I know that He showed Himself faithful in a thousand ways (including bringing me and my family into friendship with some incredibly beautiful people of God), proving over and over again to me that He is who He says He is and does what He says He will do.
I know that He answered my cries for wisdom and light in places where I would have slipped had it not been for the reigning, sustaining hand of my Father who has my best in mind at all times. And into those dark places full of questions I found answers, together with my husband who also asked. And glorious light has flooded our hearts and lives and we are at rest in the Way we have been shown...the Way of the Cross that leads Home.

 

I would not trade a minute of this experience for anything of lesser value than what I have been given. It was worth every sleepless night, every broken piece of my heart, every cut of the Pruner's Knife, every tear drop that filled the buckets of tears I have shed through it all.

Most of all, though, I praise the Lord that He has shown Himself mighty and that He opened doors that only He could open...and taught me how to sit still and see His salvation as I walked in obedient gladness, answering the call He put on my life.

a peony blossom from my garden;
photo credit: Angela Zimmerman

If you are walking through a valley...look up. Acknowledge the raging waves as facts around you, but don't focus on them. You will sink. Look up to Jesus, the Author and the Finisher of our faith. No one can separate you from His love. No one can pull you away from Him who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

Anchor yourself in Him and His Word. Trust and obey Him. He knows what He is doing.
All the time, in every place and in every circumstance. He can make good to come from wrong. He can make something beautiful from a mess.

Don't take on what is His job to do. Be bold for Him, but remember that He is the changer of men's hearts. You just rest in Him, and be an example of the believers.

And watch what He will do in your town.

Buttermilk Falls; Ithaca, NY
photo credit: Angela Zimmerman

 

 "I will bless the LORD

at all

times:

 his praise [shall] continually [be] in my mouth.

My soul shall

make her boast

in the LORD:

the humble shall hear [thereof], and be glad.

O magnify the LORD with me, 

and let us exalt his name together.

I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears."

(Psalm 34:1-4)