Tag Archives: trusting God

My Story

I was ready to curl up in a purple chair and sit a cup of tea in front of me on the book table. That’s my name for the coffee table because it holds more books than coffee. It was the end of the day as I prepared to step away from work when I noticed a notebook laying under some papers and pulled it from the stack taking it with me to the chair.

It’s one of my favored notebooks in which I began filling up the pages in March 2019. As I sat flipping through the pages, it was like reading parts of the story that brought me to today. Some pages pulled at my heartstrings a bit and I couldn’t help but imagine how different my life would be if I hadn’t made some of the tough decisions written on those pages. Then I recalled these words from a song…

My story, Your glory

My pain, Your purpose

Those words are from a song by Matthew West.

This morning, I heard this song and believe it’s played everyday for weeks now and it comforts me knowing what I may see as a mess, God can use as a message. At the beginning of this song Matthew says to God, “My favorite part is where you show up.”

God showing up is the best part of my story.

My Story by Matthew West

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.