Finally, Part III

Fast forward a few years. College was a whirlwind of school, work, and spending all my available free time with Jason. We married in 1999. I worked for Sylvan throughout and ended up as a director and loved it. Sylvan was everything I could have asked for in a career. So when I “hit the ceiling” in that job, I began to look at the option of buying a franchise for myself. As a young person with no money, that proved to be a challenge. We were not opposed to moving, but wanted to be in driving distance of our parents.

That process was the first major hurdle I ever had to face in life. In the course of a year we had a deal fall through, bought our first house, found another available business, began pursuing it, had to then sell our first house, move 3 hours away, find a new job for Jason, and somehow get financed for the acquisition of the business. God had shown me this course and certainly did not make it easy, but for every door that seemed to close he showed me a better way. For the first time I learned about the power of prayer in MY life. I learned how to cry (with real tears) out to the Lord for guidance and answers and poured through scripture for assurance. He was faithful.
Shortly after our move, I got pregnant. Praise God for his perfect timing because I never would have chosen three months into a new business as a good time to start having kids, but God knew better. Peter was our Christmas baby that year. God continued to bless our lives over the next couple years….Jason started his own company and Sylvan continued to grow. We were blessed with Grace in 2005. That fall I finally decided to get involved with people at church. We had been attending as Peter would allow since we moved and we were involved in a very small link group, but I hadn’t connected with anyone yet.

I started attending the women’s Bible Study in September and two weeks into it I was “kicked out” of the group I had joined and told to join the group with all the women who had young kids. I can say with confidence that day was a turning point in my life. I met women are now my closest friends and we studied the word together and put into practice the concept of iron sharpening iron.

That study and the ones that followed along with the fellowship with those women created an environment for me to get excited about a relationship with Christ again. Once I started to do that, though, things started getting tough again. Work is harder, marriage is harder. It’s as if God is asking me if I really trust him or not. Honestly…some days I do, some days I don’t. Through all this, God is changing my heart. When I see how much grace it takes for Him to love me, I know I can show some grace to others as well. Somewhere along the way I realized that “smoker” is not synonymous with “heathen.” With that all those other judgmental things that were so much a part of my thinking have fallen away as well. Not only are we forgiven when we accept Christ, but he forgives us when as Christians we still struggle with sin. It is forgiveness for all sin, not just the Christian-approved little sins, but also the major screw-up-your-life sort of sins. I believe God is hurt by our betrayals, but he doesn’t turn his back on his people. And if he doesn’t do that, neither should I.

That’s where I am at now. There is a lot of stuff that I’m going through, but I can wait to share it. I really appreciated a teaching by Beth Moore when she talked about waiting for the end of the story before publishing it. That makes a lot of sense. As small pieces of my story complete themselves, I’ll share. In the meantime, I am enjoying and clinging to the victories I’ve already experienced.