30 Jun 2010, Posted by spittingimage in General, No Comments.

Where do we go from here…

Plans for your life

Jeremiah 29: 11 “For I know the plans I have for you,"
declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to
give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to
me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me
with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you," declares the LORD…

These past two years have been extremely trying for me and
my walk. I am not sure how much I alluded
to in the past entries about my wife, but over the past two year, almost to the
date of the first year anniversary, she has had some major health complications
that the doctors cannot explain the cause of to this day. Needless to say, they were able to treat her
after she was hospitalized both times, but for me, it was extremely
unnerving. Basically, to put it simply,
she was very close to having her body (at the age of 31) go into renal
failure. Her CPK levels were off the
chart and the first year she could barely walk up the stairs holding our
youngest (at 2 years old, now 3). For
six days she was hospitalized (the first year) and for 4 days she was
hospitalized this year.

I have a new found respect for single parents. Frankly, I don’t know how you do it
24/7. Last year, my in-laws were in
Florida and my parents are just too old to handle my 3 kids and life was
extremely stressful and turned me upside down and inside out. I was on my own, while my wife was in the
hospital, being mom, dad, nurse, caretaker, cook, maid, and all around defense
for my family. After the kids were in
bed I fell into bed and wrestled in prayer, in tears, and in reading God’s word
for answers. Seriously, I couldn’t
believe that this is what he had planned for my life, to take my wife away from
us and to leave me as a single parent raising 3 younglings. By the way, I also want to say that Spiritual
attack was also evident in my life through this time as well, both at the
workplace and elsewhere.

The hardest prayer I think that I have ever prayed (over
tears) was for my wife and for her healing, but as I continued searching the
Scriptures for answers I found myself having to pray, “not my will be done, but
your will Father.” It was at that point
that I gave everything to Him. I gave
him my tears, my stress, my hope and my frustration – not knowing where this
road would lead. I wrestled in my bed,
crying myself to sleep for the love of my life, and asking to have her just one
more night in my home.

I had taken 3 days off of work to be the parent, and my work
was more than patient, given the circumstance.
I was reading many Scriptures including the one listed above and all of
a sudden a great peace came about me. I
cannot explain it, except that there was a real calming force about me. At that point the phone rang and it was a
friend who leads our church’s prayer team.
She told me that a group of six women were praying for me that morning
and she wanted me to know that. I asked
her the time that this occurred and she said it was right about the time that I
felt that unbelievable peace, given my circumstance. The strange thing about that was that my
mother-in-law (over 1700 miles away) felt that same type of peace come over
her.

This past January, I moved my parents into assisted living
(in another state by my sister) right about the time that my wife went back to
the emergency room only to hospitalized again in January 2010 for the same
thing that the doctor said the year before would never come back. Strangely enough, she went into the hospital the
day before I flew back, so I was able to land in Chicago and visit her there
and spend the day with her at the hospital.
These past two years have taught me something in my Christian walk that
I don’t think anything else could have done in such an extreme way – to trust
in the Lord. To trust Him no matter what
and no matter what happens in your life.
What would it profit me to gain the whole world and lose my own
soul? What would it profit me to have
everything in this world but to lose my faith in God? The answer is quite simple – nothing. There is nothing on this earth that is worth
losing that. Nothing!

God has plans for me, not to harm me, but to prosper
me. God has plans for you too. What does he want in return? The answer is simple yet not easy. It requires obedience, repentance, trust and
a heart of worship. He does not want hypocrisy;
he does not want a lukewarm person. When
you want to come closer to Him, He will come closer to you – I promise!

As hard as life is and could get, God will meet you where
you are at. A word of caution, He is a
Holy God and he doesn’t want just a part of your life as a Christian – He wants
all of it. And for the Legacy Dad’s out
there – remember that your children out there are watching you, and remember
something even more important than that – God is watching you all the
time. JOB 7.

Dante