Unfair Trade

It is that time of year again~ For me, it is the time of year that we transition out of our hold up of Winter and head into our busy Spring that includes cleats, running shoes, baseballs, and lots and lots of watching my kids compete. We spend the winter coming together, growing and enjoying just being a family after 9 months of track, baseball, and football. This year though I seem to not only becoming into that season with my family but also my life.

I have spent the last six years in a winter season almost like a caterpillar being transformed in a cocoon. I have spent six years being completely transformed from the inside out. In that six years I lost sixty pounds, went from having little kids to teenagers, came to appreciate who I really am and actually like her a lot, become totally captured with my husband, and fallen totally in love with Jesus. Am I saying before this time that I didn't love Jesus, or I wasn't digging my husband? No, but I couldn't love them they way they deserved until I woke up and loved the girl inside.

Did I spend those six years comfortable? Uh~ NO! Those were some of the hardest years in my life and yet that is exactly what I needed to become who God knew I was all along. You see we run from hardships, we curse God when life is tough, we yell and scream and kick at the injustice of it all. I admit I did that sometimes, but what I see looking back is I needed the pressure of those circumstances to propel me into a deep walk with Jesus.

If you have a good job, with a good life, good kids, good marriage, and a good church where is your motivation for a GREAT God? I look back and I was just a two dimensional version of who I am now. Now I feel like Dorthy coming into the land of Oz after living a black and white existence.

Usually when we are going through trouble or pressure we feel like God or life is unfair. You know what is really unfair? That the very one that created us had to take on our sins and pay for our death with his life. That is the most unfair trade in the history of mankind! So I will take my pain, my trouble, my sickness, my child with a disability, my church that is a mess, my marriage that is unkind, my rebellious kids, my old cars, my lack of income, my... whatever you choose to put in there and realize that nothing I go through will ever compare to what Jesus did for me. What I go through today shapes who I am tomorrow, so today instead of feeling sorry for yourself, and beating yourself up why don't you just ask God this question:

If you laid your life down for me then you must have a plan for my life. What lessons do I need to learn from my circumstances to teach me who you know I already am to live out the life you saved me for?

 For the record, I am now completely different six years later. If you don't like where you are today are you brave enough to let God completely change you? I am glad I let him change me, because you know... I am a pretty neat person because greater is He that is in me! Thanks Jesus for the unfair trade! I will take it any day!