It has been a very long time since I have sat down and wrote in this blog. What a time it has been since last I shared:
*My husband and I are still living with my Grandparents and Uncle and working hard with our family to take care and provide for our elderly grand parents.
* Dan was hired in Lawrence and is diving back into the world of YMCA Aquatics and is doing great.
* I had surgery on my shoulder and have been doing everything I can to get it back to strength to continue my fitness journey at full throttle and not accommodating.
* I have fallen in love with fitness coaching and helping people all over the country start looking themselves as a creation of God and working toward healthy living.
* Granddad's care has exponentially grown in need , as he is now formally on home hospice and every day has become a new normal.
In January , I stepped down from leading fellowship in our church. It was a very tough choice to make , but a current theme kept coming up, and fellowship was not helping me work through that issue. You see the theme that popped up was, " not being enough". Every event I would help run , or try hard to coordinate always came with some negative feedback. I internally took that negative feed back as a direct attack on me, and my worthiness. I know that is a load of garbage, but alas, your inner demons run free , if you Don't allow God to keep them in check. So with the New Year starting, I knew I needed to focus on who God says that I am.
During the start of this year, I began to get a constant nagging feeling about needing to lead a Bible Study. Much like Jonah , I ignored this nagging and ran away. We all know how that story ends.... the good news is I avoided the Whale Vomit and committed to reaching out to our pastors about adding this to the schedules for the spring. For some reason or another the story of Esther kept popping up during the brain storming months. She said Hi in my personal devotions, she was mentioned in church, and then again someone had the nerve to talk about her on Facebook.
My dear BFFL , then told me that Beth Moore had a study on Esther and I was welcome to use the curriculum for the study. Ok , Jesus, I got the point.... let's study Esther.
What you might not know about me, is that Esther and her Palace always holds a near and dear place in my heart. If we look back into the earlier chapters of my life you will see the amazing golden years, known as CAMP. Camper and staff alike I had a combined total of 17 years at White Mountain Ranch. Happy T and White Mountain Ranch is really the main tool that the Lord used to define who I am today. It means so much to me, that its actually hard to talk about because I miss it so much and it breaks my heart its still not the camp that it used to be. Well anyway... at camp we each had a Biblical named Cabin. I bounced back and forth every year to a new cabin, but the one that I loved the most, Was ESTHER'S PALACE. In my opinion , it was the best cabin at camp.
Every summer I was asked to be the counselor in that cabin, we would dive into her story.
Every summer we promptly then dress up as princesses , because lets be honest.... wearing a tiara , regardless of your age and how " tom boy you are".... makes you feel special.... If you haven't worn a tiara, then let my Friend Amy share with you my exact feelings on Tiaras.....
So this morning, is Sunday and also Mother's Day. I am on stay home duty for Granddad. Instead of just diving into my business or catching up on laundry, I felt intentional that I wanted to start my home work on Esther. Today we covered approximately 2 verses in chapter one. In short is simply was the , " Once upon a time" part of the chapter. I had no idea how much value those verses actually meant. The study has you diving all over scripture to see the depth of the time frame and who the characters are that we are about to learn from.
Then Beth asked these questions:
" Has a negative event or a near- eternal wait recently made
you lose hope about something that is important to you?"
Do you have any natural reasons to think that whatever your
Do you have any natural reasons to think that whatever your
"once upon a time" might have been , it can never be now?
And Katy Wept.
Though I don't reflect on it often, I have lost hope in having a family.
I have lost hope in ever continuing on with adoption.
I have lost hope that my body will heal to allow me a full pregnancy.
I have lost hope that I can help provide joy to our family with grandchildren.
This journey "feels" like a neat-eternal wait.
But Hope is never lost, just sometimes forgotten.
The study goes on to explain that only 5 times in the Bible is a certain Hebrew phrase, "wayhi bime" used to introduce a story. Without exception all 5 of those times this phrase, similar to once upon a time, is used to set the stage for impending doom. But you see in each of those 5 times, catastrophe does occur, a happy ending follows. But before the happy ending is realized, much grief occurs.
You see , no life is free of troubles. It doesn't matter what religion, race ,gender, social status or nationality you are. Crap is going to happen , because we live in a sinful world.
But she finishes writing with this, "When we trust our lives into the hands and pen of an unseen BUT ever present God, He will write our lives into His story and every last one of them will turn out to be a great read. With a grand ending."
I think Esther and I have a big journey ahead. One that reminds me to dive into scripture and remember how prevalent it is in my everyday life. To remind me not to lose hope. Because the bottom line is, I know the ending of this story. This ending is one where I am able to spend eternity with my creator. Free from pain and sorrow. Free from sinful desires. Free from the feeling of not being enough. And ever in the presence of the One who loves me. Who told me every day of my journey... You my child, are more then enough... because I AM.
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