Up the Sunbeam

-- Please bear with the length of this post--I promise you won't be sorry if you read to the end!! This is the TRUE story of God at work in ways I have never seen before even though I always knew He could! NEVER BE AFRAID TO TRUST GOD OR TO PRAY YOUR HEART OUT TO HIM!!! NEVER!!! After stuffing ourselves on the 4th of July feast Hero Husband made that featured both fried and BBQ chicken with all the fixin's, Drummer Boy, She So Sweet, and I headed over to our favorite spot to watch one of the many fireworks displays in our area. (Hero Husband loves Independence Day, but prefers to relax at home and let us have our firework fun.) We parked strategically to have an easy getaway afterward, gathered our chairs and my camera gear and had a pleasant walk to where we staked out our claim. Caution tape marked the line between the safe zone and the danger zone, and we set up our chairs about 40 yards deep in the safe zone. I tinkered awhile with camera settings, absent-min...

-- After decades of not getting it, (I mean completely obtuse, dumb-as-a-post not getting it), finally the combination is entered, the tumblers have rotated into alignment and the lock is open!! Welcome to my epiphany! I have been asking God for most of my adult life to give me a way to understand trials and suffering in the lives of His children that would allow me to really, actually, truthfully, from-the-inside-out, see them in a positive light.  I just could never get all the way there. I always believed that God brings good out of things the enemy intends for evil, but I NEVER EVER could FEEL anything but dread and sadness and fear when it came to facing trials.   Worry and   fear of what God might allow in order to teach me something have been my long-standing battle. I have learned and wrestled with the truth and I have chosen trust instead of fear, but it has been hard every time.  What I longed for was the kind of understanding that is so int...

-- I come from a long line of worry warts. Both my grandmothers were masters of the art of fretting. My mother, to her credit, has greatly overcome many of her worrying tendencies by choosing to pray instead, but she would be the first to tell you that the worry gene is a tough one to overcome. When I left home at 18 to go to a Bible college 1200 miles from home, my fledgling ability to worry went into overdrive. Every time the phone rang, my imagination flashed a scene of hearing horrible news of a catastrophic car accident that had killed my entire family, leaving me alone in the world. If I was meeting someone and they were a few minutes late, I just knew they were dead in a ditch somewhere. I felt as though I was constantly one heartbeat away from being blindsided by tragedy. Somehow, worry felt like a small measure of control--if I worried about everything, at least if it did happen, it wouldn't take me by surprise. You hear the stories all the time--"I though...

From a photographer's point of view, this is not a great picture, but for me, it is a message I need frequently. In April 2007 my husband's company and his job were among the first casualties of what many months later would become the current economic crisis. When we got the news, we were disappointed of course, but immediately started looking for the good in it, and we both had great faith that God was going to use this for our ultimate good. We really didn't worry because we fully believed that God was more than capable of giving my husband a new and better job. We just never imagined how long it would take. We never thought we would lose so much. We never thought God's provision would be so gradual. We never thought we would be in such a precarious position for so long. Before any of this happened, I had taken this picture and created a greeting card with it. Three years later, I feel like I frequently could benefit from sending it to myself! What I ...