A real life road trip

I had an interesting revelation while preparing for my upcoming Thanksgiving holiday road trip.  Even though I have a GPS in my car, I still found myself printing door-to-door directions from Google Maps.  I realized that even though I would have step-by-step directions right there in the car, I still needed the additional comfort of a printed set of directions that showed me the entire route at the same time.

It occurred to me that my daily walk with God is sort of like this upcoming trip.  Even though God is there providing step-by-step instructions as my own personal God's Positioning System, I still want to see the big picture. I still want to know where I'm ultimately headed and which route He's sending me on to get me there.

As much as I want to see God's big picture for my life, maybe that's not such a good idea.  After all, He must have a good reason for not showing us all we want to see at one time.  Maybe He knows that too much information will be confuse and overwhelm us.  Maybe He knows that we might not want to go where we ultimately need to be.  Or maybe He knows that if we see the big picture, we won't understand it anyway.

As much as I want all the answers now, I've got to trust that God knows best.  Just like my GPS, I have to be willing to trust Him to get me where He's destined me to be - one turn at a time.

Lessons I learned from cataract surgery

Today I was reflecting on the need to see things from God's perspective rather than our own.  When things aren't going as we'd planned or hoped, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that we can only see a very limited piece of the bigger picture.  I was reminded of how I learned this lesson in a vivid way last year when I had cataract surgery. That experience taught me to view life from a different perspective.  I've posted lessons I learned from cataract surgery here.

A season of silence

There are times in my life when God is on a roll - the blessings come faster than I can count them.  Now is not one of those times.  I've been struggling through a season of silence for a couple of months now and I haven't been handling it as gracefully as I'd like.  

Thankfully, while God may not be speaking to me in ways that I can readily understand, He has been showing me how to use this period as a learning opportunity.  Click here to read my thoughts on learning how to listen even when God is silent.

The importance of sharing

People who know me well, and perhaps some who don't, know that I often share the painful experiences of my past.  My ex-husband was a very private person, and he hated this quality about me.  I could never get him to understand that there is no value in keeping lessons learned to ourselves. I believe it is a moral obligation, a calling, to try to help ease the pain of others when I can by sharing my story.

Praying inside the box

Many people believe that we should ask God for what we want, leave our prayers with Him, and move on, knowing that He will answer our prayers in His time and in His way.  In theory that makes perfect sense.  I wish I was disciplined enough to do it.  I've gotten better about not repeating the same prayer over