Growing Pains

Happy late July!

There have been a lot of changes lately in my life--moving, starting a new job, turning 26... I feel like I've reached that point of being a bona fide grown-up, and I'm not exactly sure if I'm ready or able to fill the role. It reminds me of when I was a kid and had growing pains, where I could feel my bones literally growing and stretching. It was pretty painful, especially for a girl like me who was already 5'9" by age 13 or 14. But then, after a while, somehow I morphed from a gangly girl into a willowy ballerina. Like growing pains in your bones, growing pains as a person walking through life can also ache and ache--your heart aches, your mind aches, and your body does too a lot. But then, after a while, somehow you have morphed into a stronger follower of Christ and have continually learned how to love people more and more for His name's sake.

This is a challenging time for a variety of reasons, but especially in considering what purpose or plans God has in store for me. I just pray that I'm allowing God to grow me into the woman He created me to be, even when life doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

Then I was reading in my daily devotional centered on Mark 6:45: "He made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side..."

Oswald Chambers said in this devotional:

"His purpose is for me to depend on Him and on His power now. If I can stay calm, faithful, and unconfused while in the middle of the turmoil of life, the goal of the purpose of God is being accomplished--His purpose is the process itself. What He desires for me is that I see 'Him walking on the sea' with no shore, no success, no goal in sight, but simply having the absolute certainty that everything is all right because I see 'Him walking on the sea' (v. 6:49). It is the process, not the outcome, that is glorifying to God. God's training is for now, not later. His purpose is for this very minute, not for sometime in the future."

Amen!