Peace

My 40 hour a week job is a receptionist at a medical centre. It is not in the rich area of town but rather in the middle of the poor in our community. I am honoured to be part of their lives and often this part is during a rough period as 95% of the time people come to see us when they are sick.

In my role I get to meet all of our patients, I get to know them and their families and I get to see how unique and special each person is.

So when one of these precious people is diagnosed with something terminal or a death suddenly happens, I get to be part of the grieving journey with this person and/or their family and friends.

Having experienced grief first hand through Mark’s ten year illness and then with his death I know a little of what each person is having to endure. I watch the shock, hug them through the tears, pray for them but mostly I wish.

That probably sounds like a funny thing to say as a Christian, like I believe in magic or something but that is not what I mean.

What I mean is; I wish that person, their family and their friends did not have to go through this. I have lived it and I know how revolting grief is. It literally breaks your heart, it gives you physical pain, your brain stops functioning, you no longer have control of your emotions, you are irrational, moody and can be aggressive. You become demanding and withdrawn at the same time. Life looks grey, all colour has lost its brightness and hope wanes. Some lose sleep, for me all I wanted to do was sleep. Some don’t eat and others eat for comfort. You constantly want what you can’t have and the majority of the time that ‘want’ is to go back in time – A time before illness and death invaded your life.

But there are no time machines, there is only forward and forward means having to keep living when actually you don’t really want too.

That is what I wish.

But I know that that person and the people involved in that person’s life have to deal with the grief. It is going to become part of who they are, it is going to mould them and if they let it, it will mould them for good.

Good. How can something so horrific like grief bring good?

In the bible it says,

I don’t know how God does it but truly if we let him he does eventually use all grief for good. How do I know this?

Because the proof of it is in me and my four beautiful amazing daughters. We are rising again out of the ashes of grief. We are facing the world and we are saying we want to make a difference in people’s lives, we want to love like Jesus, and we want to be part of God’s solution to a hurting world. We have endured heartache head on and through God’s love and God’s love alone we have survived and we are ready to be used by God.

Only the grief we endured could make us the people we are today. Only the heartbreak we carried could make us into the compassionate people we have become. And only by experiencing God heal us could we then with absolute conviction offer this same healing to others.

I wish no one had to face grief but I know that if people let God in and allow him to have control, he can turn that grief into something amazing to live for!

Let God have your grief today and then watch what he will do with that grief and with you – I promise you it will be remarkable!

I am a planner – always have been and most probably always will be. I believe this is a godly attribute as God himself is a planner 🙂

I do life happily by having something to aim towards – some of my goals are little and some are ridiculously huge.

As a couple this was how Mark and I worked as well. We got married with the plan to do missions. When we were out on the mission field we were always planning the next tour, the next gig, the next adventure.

When Mark got sick and we were told it was cancer and he was going to die I continued with my planning. This time it was not happy planning but planning for a future that involved Mark getting sicker, dying, a funeral and then life after as a young widow with four small girls. It might seem morbid – but I had a plan.

As most of you know life doesn’t often go to our plan and of course life didn’t with Marks illness taking a very unexpected turn with the diagnosis of brain damage caused by the radiation treatment. When this happened we found ourselves in no man’s land. There was no plan! And what was worse there could be no plan! The neurologist, the oncologist and we ourselves had no idea how this illness could evolve.

I was lost! This among other things caused me to cope very badly with Marks illness (I won’t elaborate because it is in my book). I had to let go of my natural instinct to plan and have a goal and instead blindly trust that God, my heavenly Father, had a plan and he had it all under control despite the fact I didn’t.

Yes I learnt a lot of things through that, and yes I did learn to trust in God.

So why am I bringing this up? Well I had a plan – yep I had a plan for how I was going to do the next few years of life while I still had one daughter left at school. I thought my plan was in line with what I felt God was leading me into and so thought it was all sorted.

But last Sunday after some time spent alone with God asking him about some issues that needed to be sorted out to keep my plan working, God said, “Drop it, this is not my will for you to continue to pursue this. It is useless to me and therefore useless to you. Let it go.”

If there is one thing I have learnt to be good at it’s obedience to God’s voice. I knew he had said it and it actually confirmed what I had started to figure out because what I was pursuing was simply not working out.

So here I am with no plan. I have no idea what I am supposed to do next. I am trying to learn about marketing my book because God told me to write it so I figure I better work at selling it. But other than that – there is nothing!

All I want to do with my life and my days is tell others about Jesus. I want God to use me to encourage people to know God or know him better. That was the vision statement behind the book.

I am very blessed in my job to work at a Christian Medical Centre and I get to talk to people about Jesus, pray for them and try as much as I can to show God’s love in between the very busy phone and the administration required to run a doctors clinic.

But I know God is getting me ready for a change but I have no clue what that is.

God says in the well-known verse in Jeremiah 29:11

So even though I don’t have a plan – I can trust that my Saviour does, but there is a condition to me knowing that plan and it is found in the following verses in Jeremiah 29 Verses 12-14

So at present this is what I am doing. I am calling on God, I am praying to God and I am seeking God, both to draw closer to him but also to discover his plan for my future and what he wants me to do next. I am trying not to get frustrated (which is my natural tendency) and I am trying not to force anything. And I am waiting.

God has a wonderful plan for EVERY single person’s life. A plan that you can’t possibly imagine, and it will fulfil all the desires that are in your heart. But the condition to finding this plan and living it is like the scripture said, it’s calling on God, praying to him and seeking for him. When you discover God, which he has promised you will if you ask, then you will also discover the plan and the steps to that plan. Sometimes you will have to wait and trust for the next step, like I am at the moment, but it will come if you just keep following Jesus.

And so I wait in eager anticipation for the plans and the next steps he has for me. I’ll keep you posted!