You know what they say about best-laid plans? On Friday I was going to participate for the first time in Lisa-Jo Baker’s fun Five Minute Friday blogging exercise… she gives you a word and you write whatever’s on your heart, whatever comes to mind… for five minutes. And then you share it.
It’s amazing how God can speak through one word and say so many different things to so many different women, all at one time!
The word was “choose” and as I started mulling it over, I realized that I would have to choose to blog about it later, because I was late for an emergency doctor’s appointment!
I live in chronic pain that my doctors don’t feel they can do anything about. But when it suddenly gets worse or different, I’m supposed to call – which I had done.
Two hours later, I was being diagnosed with a “trabecular fracture” (like a stress fracture) in my much-operated-on right knee. And I’m on crutches — again — for the foreseeable future.
All of a sudden, that word “choose” represented a whole different world of things than it did earlier in the morning.
As in, I can choose to feel sorry for myself.
I can choose to feel unfairly singled out for more than my fair share of physical pain and suffering. (Regardless of how irrational that is.)
I can choose to panic about my upcoming book deadline and speaking engagements. (It’s miserable trying to write on pain meds and exhausting trying to get around airports and hotels on crutches.)
I can choose to borrow trouble, imagining all the millions of things that could go wrong, all the possible complications and setbacks.
I can choose to worry and fret and fear.
I can choose to throw myself the mother-of-all pity parties and curl up in a puddle of tears.
Or I can choose to trust in the God who loved me and gave Himself for me.
I can choose to remember the word He gave me for the year — “FEARLESS” — and know that He saw this coming…
I can choose to recall how many times in Scripture, it was when things were at their bleakest, when circumstances appeared most dire, when God’s people were most helpless and hopeless — that He showed Himself a mighty Savior.
I can choose to feel the wind in my hair and the spray of the sea on my cheek and know that I know that the waters are about to part in front of me. That I’m about to witness a miracle. His divine intervention. His mighty power. His deliverance. His salvation.
I can choose to be excited about where this next journey will take me… where He will lead me and what He will teach me.
And it’s the same for you.
You can choose, too.
