God is at work in the big middle of it all. He sees the whole picture, from the beginning to the end. We only see the here and now. Sometimes I go to a mountain precipice overlooking a canyon. Almost always, hawks and bird-kind are flying in the canyon. From the canyon rim, I look down on them. If I were standing on the canyon floor, I would barely see them when looking up.

Perspective differs according to where you are viewing the thing. God views our lives from His perspective. He sees what we cannot see. He knows what we shall be when we have completed our journey and have become a trophy of His grace. It is hard to comprehend this during troubling moments. When discouraged with it all, we might think God is absent or not all that active. Frankly, though, we have no idea of what God is doing behind the scenes.

Yet, miracles are all around us if we look for them.

My writing is from a spiritual perspective. What I write is written from the viewpoint of a life hid close to its source. God is that Life Source for me. He is my closest companion. He is why I write this type of message. I desire to offer what I know to others, so they can access what I know, have learned, and experienced.

My innermost desire is to point you to God. A life hidden in God takes on meaning and purpose. It experiences beauty and wonderment as it redeems and restores. I want to live out the immediacy of how God is refining my nature and shaping me that He might use me through my life and writings.

Spiritual life transforms through a refreshing, invigorating process.

My spiritual journey reflects the heart of the matter. What God is doing in me is humbling, yet fulfilling, hard, yet freeing, uncertain, yet centered. God is changing me into a selfless created-being who shouldn’t need human praise and recognition, whose ultimate fulfillment is the joy and satisfaction of living in close relationship with Father God.

However, it doesn’t happen without trouble and struggle.

I began seeking God in my twenties. I have learned a lot during the intervening years, between then and now. The path of spiritual discovery is a process of learning and applying. The more I study and apprehend the content, the more I find layers of truth. The more I consider God, the more I realize that He wants me to live in intimate fellowship with Him. While the love of God is formulating in my heart, my spiritual relationship is being cultivated. This dynamic becomes something so alive that it has a great need to be shared.

God is eager to love on us.

Taking time to ‘be at one’ with God, to read His Word, pray openly, seek His heart, and to know Him with a degree of intimacy, comes with an ongoing pursuit to know Him. Frequent meditating and considering of spiritual truth and godly thought are necessities for this journey of faith. And, we begin to love Him back.

Each area applied in our spiritual development is expedient when a relationship with God is sought, found, and actualized. 

As a result of all this seeking, my spiritual life experienced a reversal. It morphed from doing to being. This reversal happened long before I read spiritual Greats who have come to this same conclusion (that validated my perceptions).

When ‘being’ comes first, with ‘doing’ as its outworking of faith, we live out of love for our Creator and love for His creation. His life of love is transfusing a change within our inner self into one of Christ-likeness born from Christ-love and God-awareness. (It is a beautiful way to live life–the best way, in my opinion.)

The joy becomes ours.

Living out of love for God causes spiritual living to become organic and fluid. Your life is not your own any more, though you have your daily responsibilities and future plans. You now know that that’s a given. Your plans will be interrupted at a moment’s notice sometimes as you listen to the Spirit and act upon what He says.

It’s not about us, it’s about Him. This truth will set you free from trying to control the circumstances in your life.

Get your trust on.

Sharing a few highlights from my life and what I have learned from them will be the topic of my next few posts.  First, I will share some details about my spiritual side and my history.

Recovering in our present requires taking baby steps forward. This is what we experience when we find ourselves starting over, picking up the broken pieces in our lives, and making something new in the process.

When my oldest son was two, Joshua fractured his femur in a long side-ways break. For the bone to mend correctly required that his leg be suspended in the air in a traction device. Both legs were strung up, and he rested on his back. Two weeks later, after the bone began to mend sufficiently, he was put in a cast that included both legs and covered him up to his waist. A brace connected his legs.

Needless to say, Josh was unable to walk. He sort of scooted around after a while. When they cut off the cast, no longer was he able to walk. Once again, he went through a process of gaining his balance and relearning how to walk. It didn’t take him long, but it was necessary.

In some ways, there is a parallel I can make from his physical experience to life in general. Difficult experiences and hurtful times impact us with a devastating force. The most trying times or mournful occurrences can leave us reeling, unable to function as we did before the loss. We must learn to walk again. It takes time to recover. Major wounding can be a slow road to health.

This writing will expose ways in which my healing and the healing of others have changed us and even made us stronger in the end.

Repurposing our past occurs after the things that hurt so profoundly from our past have been helped. Now our desire is to help someone else with their struggles in this same area. It’s like my cousin, who found a way to sobriety through Alcoholics Anonymous. He now sponsors other people to help them on their path to recovery.

We like to quote the proverbial saying, When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. That’s what we do as Christians. Scripture says it another way. God makes beauty from ashes.

An acquaintance of mine, the church choir director, once sent me a card during an excruciating period in my life. I was in her choir at the time, and we were getting ready for the Christmas cantata. I didn’t know her well but admired her gift as a director and skill as a vocalist. She always had a smile for everyone. It was the month that my divorce would be granted, and I was pretty torn up about it. She wrote these words to me, that I so appreciated.

Dear Norma,

I just wanted you to know how much you are loved! In a very real sense you are grieving, like some of us are who have lost a loved one through death. I am certain our wonderful Lord will supply your every need, be it physical or emotional, still I know the emptiness and hurt there is! . . . For years I have been encouraged by 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 . . . I will, I am praying for you and yours!

Rosemary.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.  For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.

2 Corinthians 1:3-5

What Rosemary did for me was she lived out the words that she shared. From the sorrow in her life, she could come along side of me to encourage and walk with me in the sorrowing time in my life.

That is how it is. We give to others out of what we have received, even in the thin places.