the road I'm on...

Mother's Day weekend... it always is a challenging one for our family. May 5th is the anniversary date of when our youngest son Gerad went Home to be with Jesus... thirteen years ago... Sometimes it's hard to believe it's been that many years. The funeral was the day before Mother's Day of that year so as Josiah rightly stated last week... the 5th through the 9th are always hard days. We remember... we don't ever seem to say much those days but we remember.

This year... I'm having to process the detour in the road that God has me on. I didn't pass one of the classes for my program so that means I have to sit out until I can retake it in January. My fellow class-mates are moving on ahead of me. I'm not sure what God wants me to do. Do I take a leave of absence from school to pursue a certificate from another school? Do I take the bachelor's classes from my current college and graduate a year later than I anticipated with 2 degrees instead of one? Or... do I abandon this dream altogether and just go back to work full-time? I don't feel like I'm supposed to give up my dream of working in Physical Therapy but at the same time... there are bills to be paid.

Be still....

God keeps telling me to Be still. To just rest. To let Him heal the brokenness in my heart. To take the time to just sit at His feet and... rest. I'm finding this is new territory for me. I think that's the point. To just wait on Him. To work through this Bible study He has me in at the moment - Breaking Free by Beth Moore. To allow Him access to the dead, closed off areas of my heart... the wounded places. To allow Him to fix the places that I have worked so hard at trying to fix on my own. To just rest... in His arms.

This year as I was moving into the 5th of May I felt God nudging me to read a couple of books that up to this point I had thought would be too hard to read. First, I read Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo and then... on our trip down to Arkansas for my daughter's graduation from college I read Choosing to SEE by Mary Beth Chapman. Both books touched my heart in different ways. For me, Heaven is for Real was... in some ways... like having Gerad tell me what Heaven is like. It was comforting to be reminded of the fact that Gerad is safe in His arms. And Mary Beth's book... was a comforting reminder that I need to choose to SEE... that God has a plan and purpose for everything He brings into our lives... even the hard things that break our hearts and make us cry.

God is so good and for now... I will REST.