all things made new...

I really have come to believe that it isn’t so much the hard circumstances that come in our lives, as it is how we respond to them.

So, LIFE is hard and life really really really just plain sucks sometimes…..And though, most of us were all taught that God is good and that He is with us and that He loves us. And we may associate God as this really big God that knows us from a far and someone that we fear will take everything fun and good out of our lives. We are taught that life ends happily ever after and that life with God is easy. We are taught to do right and act right, but we don’t know why we believe what we believe. Or, we do all the right things and know all the right things to say, just because we think it will make us a better person. Or, we are nice to people to just make ourselves feel good about our selves. We think that if we go to church more or pray more or do good things that we will make it on God’s side and win our way to heaven. We think we have to do good things for God or we will let Him down. We see God as this boring, distant God who desires nothing but to make us miserable and try to control our lives. We may see God as our high school Chapel service…Boring…and completely a turn off.

This may be how only some grew up. I am not writing this to talk to others, this is just me thinking out loud in hopes that someone else feels the same way and can maybe somehow relate to me and in hopes that they will come to find God to be completely different. I know that I have.

I know, in complete confidence, that God is not all those things or I would not be following Him today. I don’t doubt God’s existence for a second. God has never failed me, He has always come through for me and too many life experiences have proved that God really does exist and that He really is good. I know what I believe and why. I know that I once really did grow up with that mindset and I perceived God as a distant and boring God. I also know that if anyone tells you, that walking with God is all glorious and wonderful, they are lying to you. There is nothing easy or glorious about walking the narrow way and giving up control of your life.

Somewhere down the road, God knocked me off my feet and became my best friend rather than a distant, boring, mean God. God became the most important thing to me and as I allowed myself to let Him love me and the more and more I gave Him of my life, I became to be more happy and more free. I experienced life at it’s best. I experienced His love in a real way and meet Him like never before. In a sense, I was ruined and He won my heart. There was no way that I could question if there was a God or if God really loved me. I experienced His love in a real way and was so content in Him alone. I came to the point of no turning back, where else would I go? Now that I know deep in my heart the truth and the reality of the goodness of God. There was something so deep that had been solidified in my heart, that there was never the question of turning elsewhere, because nothing seemed to come close to be anything better than Him.

God knew, that I needed to know that I know that I know that I know He loves me and that He will never leave me nor forsake me. I had to know that God will NEVER FAIL me. That I can trust Him with my life and that I can give up all my own efforts to make anything good come out of my life. I can give up all my own ways of trying to live life and trust that He will always be better. God never forced me to seek Him, He never forced me to follow Him. God gently drew me closer to Him. He always wanted to be close to me, it was me that had to desire to be close to Him before I would truly know Him and not just know about Him. Before I would really be able to experience the life that He desired me to live in Him, I had to desire Him and let Him in my life.

So, just because I have a history of walking with God for many years doesn’t mean that I won’t ever got through hard times or times of wrestling/contending/being angry with God. Truth is, we all go through pain and suffering and we can either choose to go through it with or without God…but we still will have pain and suffering in our lives. We can choose to either suffer with God or without Him….better to suffer and know God than to never know God at all!

It is so important to embrace God in the pain. If we go through the hard times without God, we will look back and wonder where God was. We will look back at those times as if God abandoned us. There is rich revelation through the hardest times if we choose to embrace them. It hurts to embrace God in the pain, but it is worth it in the long run.

I knew that in times when my emotions and heart were fighting with the truth, I had to just let myself express how I felt even if it sounded horrible and not “the right thing” to say. I needed to be real with God. I needed to tell him how I was angry, how I felt so lonely going through all that I was dealing with. I needed to tell him how I was in pain and that I did not have anything to give to try to make things right with God. He was going to have to come help me. It was never going to be anything that I could do for Him or anything that I could do to fix things. It had to be Him. Deep down inside, I knew He would come through for me, I just didn’t know when so I just waited. I am a mess, here I am and I throw all this anger, frustration, pain, misery, all theses shattered pieces at your feet and ask you to take them away. In moments like these…is when God is seeing if I really do trust Him and if I really will continue to keep walking the narrow way and continue to lay my life at his feet. If I were to analyze things and try to figure God out in my mind, I would be more lost. So, I just have to accept the uncertainties of life and keep going with God. There has been so much tension of what I understand and of what I don't understand. In moments like these, in the middle of a crisis, is when it is costly to praise God. I will choose to not be offended at God.

Some people want to intellectually understand God. We complicate things to try to comprehend them, yet we can never fully comprehend or understand God. I think that has been hard for me, to finally accept and realize, that I cannot and will not ever be able to understand God. All I do know, is that He is good and that He is real and I do know that I am miserable without Him…so I choose by faith to keep following Him,….yet it is so simple….just let it all go and let Him love us. It isn’t God’s character that He makes us do things for Him, He simply just wants to love us and live our lives for us. He doesn’t desire us to suffer without Him…though we can share in His suffering that He went through for us because He loves us to much, we can never come close to fully understanding or comphrehending His love for us.

I have never really had my faith tested more than ever until everything that I once knew and believed seemed to be swept out from under me after Sam died. For months after, God seemed so far away. I felt so hurt by God. I felt nothing but pain at times and it was very hard to even want to desire God. Cause, when you see nothing, you feel nothing, and God seems so far, and everything is painful…isn’t that what faith is…choosing to look to God despite everything, choosing to embrace pain and suffering despite things…choosing to trust God and trust that He will be more than enough for me, though I see, have, and feel nothing. The only thing that kept me stable was the deep TRUTH of God's goodness and faithfulness that was imparted years ago in my heart.

Through all the pain and heartaches of loosing Sam, I came to a crossroad. I really began to wonder if it really was worth following God. If I seek God and believe in Him to heal Sam and love Sam till the end with all that God gave me and to believe and fight his battle with him,…then to come out with more pain and heartache, is it really worth it? Yes. No doubt. It was worth every second and I would keep on doing it, no matter the pain…cause I know there is something greater….the gift that comes out of it. The invaluable revelation out of the depths of pain and suffering is worth it!

There were many ugly times with me and God. God was no longer my friend, but my close friend that I fought with and got really gut honest with. I felt that God abandoned me, I did not feel that He loved me. I was angry at God. I was afraid to get too close to Him because He might cause more pain, yet I knew He would get me through it all since He got me in it. I knew that God was worth it and there was no where else to turn. Where else would I go? All else was emptiness and more pain. Through all the pain, fighting, tears, heartaches and brokenness, came something so sweet. So, faith...right? I remember once, Brian (my twin) and I were talking and I was having a hard time with things and was pretty down on myself and Brian was like..."Leah, where's your faith?!" It hit me...this is faith more than ever right now....to choose to look to God despite everything and to choose to trust Him to be good and be everything that I need though it may not look that way or feel that way. How I feel is not the basis of my faith.

Though, He slay the hell out of me, I will trust Him. Though, I have not always “felt” like trusting Him, I will choose to because that is all I can do to help my pain. Some would think, how could you say that He would cause you so much pain? I didn’t say He inflicted pain on me, but He has allowed me to go through pain. I will say, that God has always been with me in my pain. God has always taken me through the hardest times and He has always brought something good out of the hard times. Times, when I literally thought that I might not make it cause the pain was so much. Times, when I cursed God in the face and was flat out real and gut honest with God, were the times when God came through for me. God can handle it. He can handle us being mad at Him. It was so freeing to know that the things that I always felt inside, but never said, I could say. I believe God desires us to be able to have a real, gut-honest relationship with Him. I don’t think He wants us to live pretending that everything is great and pretend that we don’t question God or wonder about things…cause “how could we dare question, God?” Yeah, right….come on people. We are human. it is only natural to question God in times of trouble or to be angry at God when He allows us to experience painful things. It is okay to be mad at God. If you disagree, than read the Bible. I am pretty sure there were many people who were angry at God. Times, when I was so real and broken before God, is when I came to discover even more who God was to me. People that think that we should never be “mad” at God or that we should never think that following God is painful, have not experienced painful things. Until, you loose someone that is very close to you, someone that you were ‘suppose’ to spend the rest of your life with, who you walked through the fire with and then is taken away to heaven, you have no room to speak or say what people “should” say while going through hard times until you experience your own “hard” times. All the pain and suffering is but a shadow in comparison to that which He will impart to us out of the hardest times.

Though, I will be the first to tell anyone that walking with God is not all glorious, it is painful at times, but I know it is worth it. I know that I know that I know IT IS WORTH IT! I know not only because of the trials that I have been through and seen God through it all and became stronger every time, but because I saw Sam fight to the end and have faith till the end....someone who's body and mind was wasting away, yet still looking to God until His last breath...Sam knew it was worth it and he came face to face with a real God...so I surely do not doubt that it is worth it to seek God.

Instead of focusing on all the negative things through all the hard circumstances, I can choose to look at all the positive things that came out of it and be thankful that it could always be worse, though sometimes I wondered how it could be any worse, but I didn’t want to think about how it could be any more worse, cause it was already to unbearable to comprehend.

Most of us live lives thinking that if we say we love God, but keep Him at a distance and not let Him control our lives, we will be happy. We think that if we don’t get too close to Him, then we won’t have to go through pain. We think that we can find happiness in the World without Him. We are being deceived…strongly lied to. People that think that they have found happiness in the world, a part from God, have no idea of what greater happiness and fulfillment in life there is. We are stuck. Ones that have had that “deep in their-gut….I know God will never fail me and I know He is good and I know that I won’t be able to find life and happiness apart from Him” yet choose to just do whatever they want are miserable, cause they know and anything else apart from God, they can’t enjoy and it always leaves them more empty…cause they have once tasted of something far better….yet ones that have never known for themselves of the goodness of God, can go about living for themselves however and whatever they want…yet they miss out on something so great and so wonderful. If only we would have known years ago and not wasted precious time. Time is valuable. What we choose to do with our time, will determine our destiny.

The trials in our lives can either make us stronger people or bitter and miserable people if we let them.

It honestly is only the mercy of God that I somehow keep coming back over and over…because He offers me something that no one else can.

So, I was just going to write a short note….yeah right!....ended up being a little longer…that is what happens when I am sick and at home…time to sit, think, and write…..or maybe it was the hot toddy that got me going!!.....so I will just stop before I write a whole book, though one day I plan to finish the book that I have started…it will happen in due time!