Tag Archives: put to the test

Don’t Lose Heart

The first time I saw Steven Curtis Chapman was over 20 years ago in a video of his song, Dive, which you can view here. It was playing in a church I was attending, right before someone was going to be baptized. They had a pool inside this church the size and shape of a hot tub, without the jets, that you stood in with the preacher. After saying the appropriate words, he leans you all the way back, completely submerged by water and pulls you back up.

January wasn’t the best and I’m grateful to be standing in February. There has been sickness, trials and tribulation all piled into one month, so by January 30th, Barb sat down and had a 30-minute crying session. This doesn’t happen very often, but I felt better afterwards. Pandora was playing in the background and in that moment I heard a familiar voice. It was Steven Curtis Chapman advertising one of his new songs, ‘Don’t Lose Heart’.

I opened my laptop and Googled the song.

I kept this song open on my laptop all week and listened to it everyday. The timing of hearing Steven’s voice was God using him to pull me out of despair and back into the light. Every word was like water to this weary soul, because my faith was crumbling and I was losing all hope this situation would end. I’d done all I knew to do, but then we need to hand the outcome to God. He wants us to trust His timing and I was failing miserably because I’m human.

Whatever you may be going through let me assure you, the hard stuff makes us better. We can’t see it while we’re in it, but it’s true. Just don’t lose heart.

A Practice in Patience

I gave myself a practice in patience. You may be familiar with Bath and Body Works 3-wick candles, and that is what I chose to practice with.

It was given to me this month and has a Christmas scent. The other day it was lit, but all three wicks were not much of a flame. They looked as if they could snuff out at any given moment. It’s a relatively new candle and this was the second time it’d been lit, so I blew it out and pondered my options. Bath and Body Works stand behind their products, so I knew I could take it to the store and they’d replace it with a new one. That was an option, or I could be patient and work with it to see how far we could go.

I lit all three wicks and they were struggling to remain lit. I placed it in a draft free zone away from activity. Two of the wicks began burning brightly, but there was one that wouldn’t stay lit. It kept going out and I’d relight it each time. I forgot about the candle for a while, but the next time I walked by and took a look, all three wicks were lit! Two of them had been burning long enough to melt down the wax, so the third one could breathe. The two stronger wicks helped the one that was struggling. We need that too.

It took hours of working with this candle, but my patience didn’t wane. We don’t know for sure how strong we really are until an area is tested. We’re capable of more than we give ourselves credit for and we don’t have to be surprised by every test. We can test ourselves to continually redefine our level of patience.