First Steps

My Beloved Child,

For years, you have been on a journey to learn to trust more.  Your lack of trust has impacted every aspect of your life.  You hold onto things and people in fear because you don't trust to release them to me.  You think the higher paycheck or the person who is clearly not the right one for you will bring you peace and contentment, but they don't.  Only I can do that.   The answer is to trust me.
I know you love me.  It is clear in your prayers, it is clear in the way you share your faith with others, it is apparent when you surrender to me in worship, but that's not enough.  It is possible to love me without trusting me, but you will never experience the fullness of what I have in store for you until you surrender to me in complete trust.  
Think about the first steps of your children.  They toddled around and held onto your fingers as they traversed the terrain of a new adventure.   What if they never let go?  Can you imagine the absurdity of your twenty-five year old still holding your fingers as he walked?  You sat right there beside each one of them as they took those first steps ready to catch them if they fell.  Then, you pulled back a little and watched them soar, but they had to let go.   They had to look you in the eye and know you have them when they fall and not shrink back from the steps they were destined to take out of fear.  How is your walk any different?  
Look at Peter, he trusted me for a moment.   He stepped out on the water in, not only faith, but complete trust.  Once his faith, his belief in Me wavered, his trust soon followed and he took his eyes off me and the waves overtook him.   The other disciples, they sat in the boat.  They loved Me too.  Nobody questions that love, but where was their faith and their trust?   It doesn't matter--- they were not called to take that step--- only Peter was.   Learn from him.  Let your love for me be the fuel to trust me implicitly.   Don't take your eyes off for even a moment for when you do, well, you know the outcome.  One last thing about Peter, notice I didn't let him drown.  I grabbed hold of him and the faith of all the disciples increased.  They said, "You really are the Son of God."   They loved me already, but their faith grew that day.  Partly because Peter stepped out of the boat to come to the one he loved, through faith, as an act of TRUST.   Won't you do the same?  


Trust me.  I've got you!

Love,
God

W-H-Y??????

Why?   That word has to be the single most empowering and destructive word in the English language.   I've been asking it a lot lately, maybe you can relate.

Why did my little girl have cancer?   Why did I lose my mommy three weeks after my daughter's diagnosis?  Why did God let these things happen?  The truth is those questions are destructive,   I will never know why my daughter ever had to endure having her spine lifted up out of her spinal cord to remove the tumor that was crowding the nerves and causing her to not be able to move her fingers.  I will never know why my mom battled an illness for years and yet the time in my life when I needed her the most, was the time God called her home.  I do know that God is good though and that's all I have.  How do I know that... it is simple.  Another series of why questions that I can't answer, but point to the goodness of God.   

The tumor my daughter had was located in such a place where the nerves are located that move her fingers, but also regulate her heart rate and respiration.  Why did she have this tumor?  Who knows?   But, why did it impact only her fingers when it could have easily taken her life before we even knew that beast was inside her tiny body?  The goodness of God.   Even in the storm of cancer, he spared her life.   

As for mom, she was with me when I stared in the face of the possibility of losing my baby girl.   She held onto me during those moments because of the goodness of God.   When her temperature began to spike and I had to leave Indiana to travel six hours to be with my mom before she passed, he heard our prayers.  You see, mom and I were very close.  I couldn't imagine not being with her when she took her last breath and yet I had to leave behind a little girl who just got home from the hospital and couldn't even take a shower without me yet to go be with mom.  Mom's temperature spiked up to 108 degrees, but she held on--- I believe God honored her mother's cry and my daughter's plea to let me be with her those last moments-- because of His goodness.   

So you see, why is a great question.  We may just be designed to ask it more than anything else for it is the why that propels our learning forward.  Sometimes we don't have the answer to the why we want, but when we re-frame the question we always get an answer.  Sometimes the answer is simply because the world is a fallen place, but God still loves me.  

The question I ask myself now is....why aren't I "satisfied" with that answer alone.  Until it is... the journey continues.