Glance back sometimes

I was released from counseling last week. {That is, until something new or extra challenging arises.} She told me that she was proud of me for following through with the whole process of EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). She said it can become too challenging, too emotional, too exhausting and too easy to quit. But I didn’t quit. I followed all the way through to the end and am so grateful for the experience and the healing.

During the months of counseling, I was tasked to make lists of some of my worst memories. I made lists of my best memories. I set up a team of wisdom friends, encouraging friends, and safety friends in my mind. I established a peaceful place with just the Lord and me in my head as well. All of these steps were crucial. But the most beneficial part of all of it was looking back over my whole life and seeing God with me at unlikely times. On my own I just saw this or that as a bad decision or a terrible situation I was put in. But there’s always more to it when you are a child of God. Even though the past is over, so many times in scripture there are calls to REMEMBER God’s faithfulness. How else do we remember without the backward look at our years?

G.Campbell Morgan says, “How constantly the backward look reveals Divine guidance where it seemed most unlikely.”

And this is what I found over and over again over these past few months. The Lord has been amazingly personal and mind-boggling faithful to me. 

Meditating on this truth and seeing it in my life, gives me hope for my present and future. And not only mine, but particularly for Ruby in this season of her life. There are so many things I am feeling these days as her senior year draws closer to the end and her future at Liberty University begins! There is a temptation to worry—about her safety, about her new room mate (who will it be??), about her major, about who she will meet for friends or even if a boyfriend is in her future over the next four years in college. Did I teach her enough? Does she have the tools necessary to succeed? Will she have opportunities and open doors?

And the answer is a resounding yes— she will have all she needs. She is a child of God. He loves her. He sees her. He will walk with her. He will open doors. He will bring friends. He will teach her all along the way— of this I am confident! And she will look back one day and be amazed at all the unlikely places that God used to guide her into His purposes for her life.

Psalm 84:11-12 “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord gives grace and glory; No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly, O Lord of hosts, How blessed is the man who trusts in You!”

Psalm 37:23-26 “The steps of a man are established by the Lord, and He delights in his way. When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the One who holds his hand. I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread. All day long he is gracious and lends and his descendants are a blessing.”

All of this also reminds me about something I tell the kids often. I did TERRIBLE on the SAT. I ended up taking the ACT and getting a decent enough score to go to a Junior College in the absolute middle of nowhere, Georgia. 

Where I met Josh.

Clearly, the Lord was in that terrible SAT score and guided me to THE best husband for me on the planet, so I win. And the Lord will do the same for Ruby and Molly and Mack. We have to learn to trust God in every season of our lives. And only God can help us do that. 

Psalm 1:1-3

“How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers.”