Disappointment + Redirection + Total Surrender = Serious Sacrifice

So I've been pretty quiet lately, but that doesn't mean things have been quiet in my life. As the winter passes, the daffodils start to blossom, and the trees start to produce little green buds, a season is changing in my life. The last month has been oh so difficult, yet amazingly necessary and wonderful. It's been up and down. A total Apollo's Chariot experience. And although I knew the drops would be coming, it caught me off guard. I've been dying little deaths. Little reminders that this was not the way my heart was supposed to feel. A direction my love was not supposed to go, especially not for three years. A devotion that I was never supposed to possess. A dream that has died, but never has been given a proper funeral. Something that I thought I was quite over, but not quite yet.

It's really funny when we kid ourselves and say that our hearts are in total surrender to God. But is everything surrendered? Sometimes its quite upsetting to think that what I want, or at least what I think I want, is not what God has been planning for me all this time. We may pray that His will be done, we may pray that He bless it, but was this HIS idea in the first place?

Accepting that something is really not going to happen the way you hoped, and to have to stand by and experience it, requires a lot of faith. Faith that God really does have our best interests at heart sees disappointments as new beginnings, not endings. A movie I recently saw centered around the main character who was afraid to take an important position in a magical toy shop. She was afraid of taking it because it was the end of all the things she had known. However, someone told her that she could not continue her story if she didn't turn the page. If you don't turn the page, you'll never find out how the book ends.

Tonight I'm tempted to put the book down. I'm tempted to simply say that I'll never love again. I'm tempted to give up. To never want to go on the next chapter. But I know that if I want to finish the book, I must pick myself up again and read on. Who knows, maybe the book will turn out better than I had ever hoped, dreamed, or expected. I think I'll turn the page and keep reading.