Thwarted?

Today I came across a message from a dear friend. He wrote it in August and I had forgotten it, stuck at the bottom of the list of Facebook messages:

I've been catching up on your blog posts. I love your writing. You write just like you speak, and I can pick up on your humor, happiness, sadness and even your frustration...Please keep writing. You have something very special going on there, and only God knows how He will use you through your gift of writing.

It impacted me again, much as it did when I read it almost 4 months ago. To think that anything I had written made an impression on someone, enough to write me such an encouraging note, was amazing. But this time it was a little sad.

I haven't kept writing. The reasons are many. This has been a difficult season of life, one where every step has been met with obstacles on my path--not little ones, but those that cause me to stop in my tracks.

Rock slide in the Smoky Mtns, TN

The picture above feels like my life--what I see every day. The questioning this has brought about feels justified, born of sheer frustration. I feel thwarted.

Will God ever use me through my writing, for anything? 

I read this while I sipped my coffee this morning:

How little those know Me who think I wish to thwart them. --God Calling

How little I know Him. That made me stop and think, which can be a good thing or a bad thing for me. It usually leads to more questions, but for now, I choose to own this statement (with a prayer to know Him more), and flip the "off" switch in my brain. Time to just be--to rest in the blessing of what is, this moment.

Stone By Stone

I have a great little book titled God Calling; a collection of the writing of 2 women, arranged in passages by day, covering an entire year. The passage I read today was another reminder that I have not mastered patience, and its very close companion, trust.

Heaven's Colors 

Looking back you will see that every step was planned. Leave all to Me. Each stone in the mosaic fits into the perfect pattern, designed by the Master Artist. It is all so wonderful! But the colors are of Heaven's hues, so that your eyes could not bear to gaze on the whole, until you are beyond the veil. So, stone by stone, you see, and trust the pattern to the Designer. 

Trust, to my mind, means letting go. It's so hard to let go. Why? Because we're taught that hard work and perseverance result in success. Chase your dream and never give up. Right?

Letting go feels like giving up. Letting go feels like the sure demise of one's dreams.

Maybe, just maybe, letting go is falling into a big, fluffy pile of warm blankets.

Maybe letting go is trusting that the pattern of our lives is already designed and laid out--and it is a beautiful mosaic.

Maybe letting go is the way to all we can ask or imagine.

Maybe there's something greater--something more. 

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. --Ephesians 3:16-19 

Maybe grasping hold of God's love is our greatest success.

But seek first his kingdom...and all these things will be given to you as well. --Matthew 6:33

I'm not going to lie--it's still not easy to trust that and let go, but it is my goal.