Endurance and faith...

I'd be a liar if I told you that this has been a FANTASTIC year.  That it has been a year of SUCCESS and BLISS.  You would see  right through me.  I know you would.

This last twelve months has taken a toll on me.  Its taken an emotional toll and a physical toll. It has left me drained many times.  But never have I doubted God's promise to us.   While I don't believe in unicorns, I do still hunt for pixies.  Maybe this is part of what has kept me from blogging so much.  We have had so much going on, some of it so mundane and day to day that no one could possibly want to read about, and the other so exhausting that I have crawled into bed at night weeping with pain, but knowing that pain means I am alive. 

But I never claimed to only blog about unicorns and sunshine, right?

We put Bear into public school this year.  Its been a very hard last year in a half since moving from the old place.  Weeks in limbo, followed by a stint in a hotel, and then a brief respite in a apartment before being able to move into what we call our Promised Land.  I don't recall the road to the promised land being paved with flowers and ice cream cones, do you?  So why should it be any different with us.

Bear loves school by the way.  It's what we need during this season of adjusting.

Some of the things that have happened since all this started almost two years ago would have many questioning if they were doing God's will.  I wont doubt that there have been times I myself have done that, but I look around at the peaceful forest that we are trying to carve our little home out of and I see God's hand. 

 Our chickens remind me of how simple life is, how we should look to God for our salvation, not man.  This is my biggest goal for 2015, to rejoice in all things.

It could be worse.  We have health, we have a home, we have food. We have more than some.   

I have a young new friend who is just thirty-ish and the first of October she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She has two little boys.  She is upbeat and always talking about praise and I have never heard her blame God.  It kind of makes you put things in perspective, you know?

James 1:2-4 says, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,  knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." 

Yes, God is alive.  He cares.  Paul in his letter to the Romans wrote, "we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance." (5:3)

And with this thought and verse in mind  I look heavenward.  I ask for perseverance and peace.