Here we are getting ready to celebrate our ten year wedding anniversary. I feel like life has beat us up. Life has chewed us up and spit us out and is waiting for our next move to see what else it can throw at us.
While my husband is still by my side, my insecurities and my poor self image have not gone away. I worry about things every day that I can't change. I worry that I'm not pretty enough (ten years, a kid, a college degree, and a full time job can definitely start to show). I worry that I'm not good enough. I worry that I'm gonna say the wrong things. I worry that my emotions are going to be perceived as something they are not. I worry that I'm not a good enough mom. I worry that I'm not making the right decisions for my son. I worry that I'm going to wake up one day and be alone. I worry that everything in life that matters to me will disappear.
A year ago I attended a women's rally in Conway. The message that night I will not soon forget. The message from The Lord I personally received that night, I will never forget.
The message was on the seasons we go through in life and was encouraging us to lean on God and trust in Him through every single season. This was a rough time in my life at home and I felt like my family was going to dissolve under the pressure we were under and I was already watching it happen. I cried everyday to The Lord before that night asking Him to hold my family together and asking Him to change our situation.
That night last January, as clear as if I were sitting next to you talking, I heard The Lord speak to me. He told me that I was going to make it. That I was going to be ok. That no matter what happened in my circumstances, He was going to take care of me and that He loved me. Beginning that night, I just started praying that God would handle it. I gave it to Him and have prayed daily since then that God would work out all things to His glory.
Here we are a year later and He has held true to those promises. He has worked in my life and is restoring the pieces of my life that I thought were slipping away. It has been a process and it isn't over yet, but He is working.
Because the theme for women's ministry this year is Redeemed, I have really been thinking about this. Salvation came for me as a child. But salvation is only the first step of redemption. Salvation is about believing in Jesus. Believing that Jesus died on a cross for your sins so that you didn't have to pay the price for your sins. Jesus did that for you and in return you get to spend eternity in heaven with Him.
Redemption is so much more than salvation alone. Redemption is about taking the broken pieces of our lives, the trash, the nasty stuff we may not even tell our closest friends, and changing those things. Cleaning us up and giving us a new purpose. Redemption is about taking what others may see as the worst situations in your life and giving them meaning and making something better out of them than we could ever imagine.
Redemption is an ongoing process that even the greatest Christians walk through over and over again with each new twist and turn that life brings their way. God can redeem you and your circumstances in life.
As I said earlier, I worry about a lot of things in life, but in the middle of my worries, I pray that I have the strength to trust God to redeem my circumstances and to make the best of them. I trust that God has a plan and that no matter what we get hit with next I know that His redeeming power will get us through.
I'm still a broken person who while trusting in God's redemption struggles with the human emotions attached to my situations. I still worry, I still cry, I still get anxious and stressed out. That doesn't mean that I'm not trusting. It simply means that I am human.
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