I have died and gone to heaven!

The day after I posted my previous blog, I got a job at our local newspaper as their education reporter. Talk about purpose on the tip of my tongue. I now have a job doing what I like to do. School this semester is wonderful too. I have six communications classes this semester: Creative Writing; English, Language and Linguists; Rhetoric; Writing, Criticism and Theory; C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (my favorite)and Editorial and Feature Writing.

This is my second semester at Pfeiffer University and friends I took classes with last semester were glad to see me again, and vice versa. It's great when someone walks out of there way to see me to class or to my car, or just goes to town for some coffee inbetween classes. My life has had more than its share of rough spots, and God has just been so incredibly good to me. I don't just love my husband anymore, I'm in love with him. Our daughter is the most wonderful girl I've ever met. She enjoys spending time with her mom and dad, likes making me breakfast on Saturday mornings, and her friends are part of our family. We are making friends with the parents of her friends, so the circle just keeps on growing.

I used to wait for the bottom to fall out when things got normal, and now I just enjoy life as it comes, with no fear of the future. I don't know how or when it happened, just realized it did. There's so much to do in life and just so little time to do it. So many things to write down, so many books to read, so many friends to spend time with.

Years ago, my brother gave me a plaque with a scripture on it that I read daily when things were tough. "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11. I have always kept it in a prominent place in our home so I would be reminded of the Lord's will for me every time I passed it. I believe in prophecy, in the ability to speak the word of God to someone and have it affect their life. Living words, words of hope and promise, words to encourage and lift up, edify and strengthen. I have to say thank you to him. Although it has a pretty frame and is calligraphied with vines of green and red, it's the words that have sustained me when I was too depressed to lift a prayer, to hopeless to believe in a brighter day, to ashamed to feel worthy of good from God's hand. Somehow, deep in my spirit, even in those times, those words resonated true.

I also have a card on my refrigerator that my mother gave me several years ago. It reads....."Commit your works to the Lord, Mary, and your plans will be established." Proverbs 16:3. It has a frog on it, which has significance for me, but that is a story for a whole other blog. I didn't have any plans, I just had a spark of hope that God had some for me and would bring them my way. Of course, I pursued avenues that would give me a better life: college,Godly companions, and a stronger marriage, a strong church body and a better walk with Christ, but he opened all the doors, which is also another story for another time.

It's always easy to look back and see God's hand when things go well. It's harder to see God's hand when things seem to be falling apart around you. He's sustained us through so much, and I have every confidence He will continue to do so.

That's my testimony. That's my God.