Well, how have you been, friend? I hope your new year has started out well. This year’s beginning has proven to be something over here. In a couple days time earlier this month I found myself with 3 new people looking to work with me. I had already been working with 2 people leaving last year, so that was quite a thrill. The beauty of it is that God totally led me to completing some tasks that I hadn’t intended on making a priority.
The amazing thing about all the trials I have been through is that God brought me to a place where I was willing to give up my talents and passions just to be in His will. If you don’t know me personally, I love gardening and flowers. My degree is in greenhouse management and floral design and I have been involved in the industry for over 10 years at this point. God has blessed me with the talent of design and I enjoy creating with plants and flowers, colors and textures, but I was ready to walk away if that was His will and he had something else in mind when he created me.
I won’t bore you with my story, but God asked me to put it on hold while I focused on Big Bro and only gave me a few projects or clients in the past few years. And those years were growing years for me as well. I’m convinced that I had to be separated from my comforts in order for God to work in my life and change me so that he can use me. It took ALOT but he finally got my heart to surrender to Him.
Anyhow, one of the people who is looking to work with me is a referral and a stranger. She was very concerned with my credibility and ability to produce quality work. Because of that, God led me to finish my website that I have been struggling to create for 6 years. In a matter of 2 days, it all went together. As I put the components together, I realized that a lot of the parts had been written and created already, but my eyes had been closed to how they fit together. It was clearly God’s timing and leading that made it all come together.
And it feels SO good to have that huge task finally crossed of my list. You can check it out here if you want to see the professional side of me. 😉
I have no idea whether I will continue to gain work this year or not, but the flurry was pretty exciting, anyhow. Encouraging, too. There’s still healing that Big Bro and I have to do, but it was neat to see the house stay in fairly good shape while I worked at my friend’s flower shop, pack and was gone for the Valentine’s Day weekend with my family, get the consultations done and estimates all drawn up. Apparently I really can handle life and as I gain in my health and as the house gets put back into order its going to get even easier.
We came back to frozen something, though, so right now we have no water at all. But that brought the bigger news today that we should be able to be connected to town water by the middle of April, Lord willing. So the end of our water issues and visits to the laundromat is in sight. After 2 years of struggling, there is maybe just 2 months left. And its going to be cheaper than we thought. Bonus and Praise God!
Reading and studying Genesis and Job has opened my eyes to God’s sovereign hand and has given me insight into what I have been going through. What a comfort and blessing God gave to me as I was getting weary of hanging on and persevering. I discovered that He remade Job through extreme trial and was able to use him to parent girls into women who would point us to the end-time bride of Christ. God used a turbulent home life to bring Jacob away from his family so that He could be shaped into the man God needed him to be and He did the same for Joseph allowing him to save an entire people from the famine. All of their extreme trials produced phenomenal results that brought glory to God.
But the number one thing that has encouraged me from the stories I have studied is that God fully restored His people after their trials. Relationships were repaired, wealth and material things were replaced, health was brought back in abundance and the person was fully prepared to be used by God. God’s trials do not end in ruin. Even for those for who death does come, HEAVEN is the reward and all those things are freely given and available for us there.
I don’t know where exactly this new year finds you or what circumstances you find yourself in, but I hope you can be encouraged by the men and women who have gone on before us and left us an amazing legacy as well as some awesome examples for our faith!
