"Look at the birds in the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" - Matthew 6:26-27. Worrying runs in my family, I come by it very naturally. My dad used to wait up for us to get home on a Friday night, unable to fall asleep until he knew we were safe in our beds. Anywhere we went we would have to call to tell him we arrived safely, as well as having all the phone numbers and addresses for all of our friend's parents. He also came by it naturally from his father, but we always teased and called him a "worry wart". My brother gets anxious when our dogs are too close to the frozen pond. When my husband is driving home and hasn't texted me back I immediately assume he's been in a fatal car accident. So in this fairly new stage of life, of the looming and ominous adulthood , it was a huge jump for Zack and I to get married straight out of school. Worries were all around us. We had both lived on our own, but never truly experienced full independence. Very quickly, life became bills and debt and student loans and car problems and insurance and rent and taxes and 'do we even have enough money to get groceries this month?'. Now I am in no way saying I know what it's like to live in poverty or anything close for that matter, we also have two sets of incredible parents who look out for us. But what I felt were the pressures and the struggles of adulthood that are very prominent and not so easy to ignore. Both of us quickly became swept up in our problems and what we owed to the world and to everyone else. We were cranky all the time, anxious, stressed, fighting over what now seems like such minimal issues. I could go on to tell the many stories of my past two years, upon being engaged and neither of us having careers, a car or a place to live once married. Stories of doubt and anger and fear and questions. But the story I have upon my heart to tell, is of God's great faithfulness, of his never ending provision.
Every single need that we had, God provided for us. I can't even attempt to deny how evidently God was meeting us in our need, how he blessed us. We found an apartment in which the landlord had a "good feeling" about us, allowing us to move in with no deposit and no credit check, and even gave us a discount on the rent. One month, tithing was really going out on a limb for us, yet that same day Zack got a pastor's appreciation week bonus, which was the exact amount that we tithed. After being turned down by banks because of student loans, we found a car were able to finance successfully through a company. OSAP and tax returns came in greater than we expected, we were continually blessed by other people and our families. I could go on and on because that's how great God is. Yet as humans, we have a tendency to forget these things don't we? Just like the Israelites coming out of Egypt. Sometimes even though God has completely liberated and blessed us, when life gets too easy we become complacent, and when life gets hard again, we start to blame. We start to question 'God where are you?". I look back and laugh at myself now, because you would have thought I already learned this lesson to trust God many times before. Yet as now I come to the end of my schooling, I once again was stricken and paralyzed in fear and doubt. "What if I don't find a job? Or worse what if I find a job that I hate! How are we ever going to save for a house if I don't have a career. What is next for me God?" I felt like the future was a big black hole I was looking into with no answers. What I already learned is that God doesn't let us see too far into the future, but He leads us step by step, holding our hands along the way. One of my favourite quotes is: "You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way" - E.L. Doctorow. Without me even having to go out and look, God provided a job for me, that is exactly in my field, exactly what my passion is in life, and the exact desires of my heart that He created in me. With the light of my headlights only inches before me, God led me into His perfect plan in His perfect timing. Not only has God consistently provided my basic needs to live, He also has blessed me and given me the desires of my heart. What more could I ask for? What a loving Father. Now days I constantly find myself humming the tune of the old hymn "Great Is Thy Faithfulness". Even when life is hard, I have learned the importance and the freedom that comes, of counting my blessings and not my problems. Worries add up so quickly, they can become the glasses you see out of blinding you from the rest of the world. Fear is a magician, it paralyzes your feet and tricks you into believing lies. Don't let it win. I encourage you to take the time to literally count your blessings, add them up, dwell on them, be grateful for them, let them ruminate in your mind and grow a beautiful garden in you. "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things" - Phillipians 4:8 My prayer is that by the daily practice of gratitude, and by His grace, that we may never forget God's faithfulness. May we learn (again and again) that His plans are greater than our own, may we trust Him, may we forever sing praises of His goodness, His providence and His love. ~ all I have needed thy hand hath provided, great it thy faithfulness Lord unto me. ~
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