The Redeemed Tragedy of the Cellist

From side to side she sweeps her bow across the strings. Eyes closed, lips pressed, shoulders hunched forward, and body pulled with the vibrant tug of the melody. She is gripped by the music. Lost, and yet utterly found. This is her place. Here in this creative space, pouring into her cello words that could never be spoken and emotions that language can’t express.
The conductor silently swings his baton in precise angular movements, directing the orchestra to surround her song. Together the symphony builds and builds into a beautiful crescendo as the remaining strings take over. Leaning back in a moment of reprieve, she grips her bow and rests it against her right leg. She gulps down the air with steadied, deep breaths as she waits for the moment the entire concerto was written upon. Her moment. The climax, her solo, at the beginning of the final movement. So much history is here in this exact solo for her, so much pain, but there is no time to dwell. She pushes it all behind her and commands her entire being to focus on each individual breath while waiting, listening to the rest of the orchestra build a tower of notes meant for her to jump from. She waits. Suddenly with one sharp swing, the conductor waves his baton and she explodes into motions. Gently holding her bow like a feather as she violently brushes it across her cello, a sound so furious, yet captivating bursts into the atmosphere. Her fingers move fiercely up and down the fingerboard in a dance only she could perform. She has never been more free, never been more vulnerable than here in this place of pouring her whole heart into her cello. So beautiful, so lovely. She becomes the music. The orchestra jumps in and together they create a vigorous symphony movement that captures the entire room. Everyone is touched as she moves as one with her cello. And then…so abruptly, you would have thought you imagined it…
Her beautiful performance cuts off as strings rip off her bow. The conductor calmly silences the orchestra with a wave of his hands. She professionally addresses the audience with grace, explaining that she will quickly go change the broken strings on her bow and return to finish the movement. With a small bow she smiles and turns to head to the back stage.

Did that truly just happen?
The crowd instantly murmurs.

An announcer speaks over the intercom assuring the room that the orchestra will continue the final movement shortly. Whispers coat the air and the sound of instrumentalists resting their instruments pierce the silence. Everyone waits for her. The star of the show. The star that failed during her most crucial performance. And as if this wasn’t enough, the announcer informs everyone that this is the second time she has broken the strings during this exact same movement in this exact same concerto.

How could this be? Failing so drastically, t w i c e ?

Could she have watered down her performance more so that the strings on her bow stayed intact? Maybe if she had put less emotion into her music to save herself from making the same mistake twice? Was this even a mistake of her own doing, or was it merely a product of bad circumstances lining up like rocks for her to stumble over?
So many questions flooded her brain as she swiftly walked behind the stage to her dressing room where she began to efficiently restore the strings on her bow. Eyes followed her exit like darts aimed at a target. Putting all of her internal questions aside, she moved, falling at ease into a routine she knew well. Replacing the strings was one of the first lessons she had learned.

It was part of the art.
A part of the process in continuing to move forward; a process of building and pausing, running and resting.

How challenging it is to reveal this process publicly. Failing for all to see. Especially amidst such a prestigious, black and white crowd with no room for grey areas.

The first time this happened to her she could hardly bear the humiliation. The memory took her back…

She was there, in the heat of the symphony’s final movement. When suddenly her passionate creative expression came to a jolting halt as strings ripped from her bow. The failure sucked the breath from her lungs. She knocked over her music stand as she quickly arose to change the strings, clumsily tripping over the hem of her dress while running back stage. She refused the offers of help from back stage employees turning pitying glances her way.
She cried silently as she replaced the strings aggressively. Scraping tears away she returned to finish the concerto all mind and no heart. Pouring out of her heart simply wasn’t worth the risk anymore.
After the concert, she remained in her chair bewildered as her coworkers patted her on the back before exiting the room. She had wept every night after that for weeks as she practiced the same movement over and over again until the callouses on her hands cracked. Even so, she relentlessly pushed herself further still. One thought pounded through her veins:

She must redeem herself.

Make the wrong, right. This continued on an empty stage with just her and her cello every night at a local music hall for months. She practiced and practiced until one night, she pushed herself so hard that finally, she broke. Her fingers bled, and a cry ripped out of her heart. The failure of her performance weighed down on her more than ever before. Caught up in her self-torment the cello slid to the floor with a crash. Throughout her school years and her adult career, she spent the mass of her life striving to be the best cellist, the perfect performer. She sacrificed everything to be the perfect musician that she was today. And she succeeded. She became, one of the most talented, prestigious musicians of her time.

A rose among thorns.

But as she progressed fear of failure also grew along with her as a subtle thorn wrapping itself around her stem, slowly choking the life from her. In this practice session after her cello crashed down, she too allowed herself to slide from her chair and crumble like a cloth onto the ground. It was there in her desperation that another sound penetrated the rattle from all the arrows she threw at herself inside her mind.

A loving whisper, one of mercy and grace.

A voice from the One who gave it all so that she could have room to grow with Him again. He comforted her with His love, and clothed her with His grace. “My grace is sufficient for you.“, He spoke.
It was enough.
Enough of a shock to revive her heart back into motion. Enough of truth to clear out the thorns, and give her the space to grow.

Jesus can handle her failures, she need not fear them. If she allows herself to share in the sufferings of Christ, she will also attain the full resurrection with Him. She must press on. Not to attain perfection on earth, but to attain that which comes from a grace-consumed life. From walking in the righteousness found only in Jesus. Becoming like Him.
This awareness that, because of Jesus, she was in right standing with God, stripped her from all forms of fear which had once gripped the wellspring of life within her. She wasn’t made to fail. She was made for victorious living. Which meant even failure was but a means for victory in Christ.

And so, the show went on. This second time around she kept that revolutionary encounter on the center stage of her mind while she restored her bow. Then she eloquently rushed back to the music hall’s center stage. The whispers were hushed but the stares continued. She could not care less. She was confident of one thing. Her right standing with God, and that was enough.
Quickly tuning her cello, she nodded to the conductor. He motioned for the rest of the orchestra to begin, only a few measures prior to where they stopped before. The large audience waited with dismay before her. The orchestra waited eagerly all around her. Yet she managed to allowed herself to drift into that secret place once again.
She was no longer in a concert hall, but back on that small, dimly lit stage, sitting upon a worn wooden chair- just her and her cello and One who knelt beside her. He couldn’t wait to watch her explode into creative motion.
Awaiting the cue from the conductor, she gently hovered her bow near the strings of the cello. In this posture she felt the pleasure from the One kneeling beside her. His delight in her brushed away that nervous sweat that had been beading upon her brow. He wasn’t bothered by her mistakes. He loved to watch her passionately pour her all into this life with a heart abandoned, ever after Him alone. And so her moment came anew. Whether she failed a third time or a thousand, she would keep pressing on because she loved every bit of playing and wanted to let her music shine just for Him. To let her process shine the light of a gracious Savior. She closed her eyes and exhaled a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding as music exploded once more from her hands.
Release.
A distant understanding lit like a match in her mind as she killed the vigorous final movement of the concerto so fearfully and wonderfully.
She let go of everything in that moment, and yet so skillfully she played nonetheless. It was her many tries and fails that allowed her to do this very thing: to naturally overflow His anointing from a place of letting go.
Like an evergreen spruce tree, she would remain bearing fruit and fragrance. Even amidst the coldest of winters. So long as her roots abided in Him. Living out of this secret space filled with grace to merely be and grow with her Beloved.

 “But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.  What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ  and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.  I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,  and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.“

Philippians 3:7-14 NIV

(Revised edition. Originally posted November 20, 2019)

When Following God Doesn’t Feel Good

My little family went on a mission trip to Thailand for six weeks over summer last year. The entire time was challenging and beautiful, life-changing and transforming. Near the end of our outreach, all four of us got sick. It started with our two kids. They spent a few days with a fever that would come and go, sometimes they had stomach problems, but after several days it stopped for them. The following week, Brenner and I came down with the worst illness we’ve ever experienced. It was far worse than whatever the kids had previously had. Our brains hurt. Our eyes could hardly open due to a constant pain behind them. Muscles and joints ached severely. Fever came and went rapidly. Food wasn’t even on the priority list because moving was so excruciating.

I put all of my strength in just living. I had never felt like I was fighting for my life before that. After two days of dealing with this, Brenner and I decided we needed to seek emergency medical care because we sensed that we had something extremely serious. Prior to this happening, we had visited a village in some remote mountains in Thailand where mosquitoes carried disease and illnesses. Therefore we went to the hospital to check ad see if we had anything serious. As if we hadn’t already felt minorities in Asia, we were very obvious Americans in a giant hospital containing nearly a thousand patients from all nations in the Golden Triangle (Laos, Myanmar and Thailand). Everyone stared at us. And yet, I was in such critical condition that I didn’t care.

“Just save me, God.” This was one of the few thoughts I kept on repeat in my mind while hardly being able to speak.

We were directed to a separate wing of the hospital. There a team of Thai doctors made a make-shift office sitting on a table outside the hospital. The sun was blinding and the heat nauseating. Upon looking at us and asking us what was happening, they immediately felt that we had dengue fever, a mosquito borne illness. The skin tests they ran confirmed that Brenner had the illness, and my results were inconclusive. Still, I remember seeing them write a large “D.F.” with a sharpe marker and circling it at the top right corner of little sheets that identified us out of the other hundreds of patients. They were convinced that we had the illness.

Our contact person accompanying us carried these papers from department to department as we were transferred around the giant indoor/outdoor hospital. I write ‘indoor/outdoor’, because many of the waiting rooms packed with sick and injured patients were outside in the heat. The indoor parts of the hospitals also had wide open doors and windows subject to the elements. The entire place was hot and packed with people. It was a hospital unlike any that a Westerner like me had been to.

My husband and I were sent for further blood tests. We had our missions team contact person with us. His name was Jai Jai. He was someone from the same unreached people group that our missions team had come all the way to Thailand to minister the gospel of Jesus to. This man was part of the less than 2% of evangelical Christians within his entire people group. And boy, was he was on fire for Jesus. He prayed and sang worship songs over Brenner and I throughout the entire process of wheeling me around the hospital in a wheel chair and translating to nurses, doctors and other medical staff for us. I was in bad shape, vomiting, drained of color, couldn’t lift my head while lying limp in my chair with eyes closed. I was a sight to behold for the many masses surrounding us in the different, giant waiting rooms. I couldn’t pray much outside of my one internal cry for God to help us over and over.

Instead of praying or thinking, I listened to Jai Jai praying and singing over us. He was going to battle for us against this sickness that could kill us, a sickness that had killed many. We were silent, but somehow, by the grace of God, unafraid. As wild as it might sound, I knew if dying was a part of this, that I had lived my life for Jesus. To live is Christ, to die is gain (Philippians 1:21). That became real for me. And if it wasn’t time for that eternal gain, then I just wanted the medical team to help us get better. Again, this is intense for me to write out, but I can’t tell you enough that the sickness was extremely painful. There was so much we did not know. So much mystery. So there with closed eyes, I gave God my trust, my hope, my life, my husband, my children, my everything. again. and. again.

We went to another office and had our blood drawn. Then wheeled over to another place. We covered so much ground in that hospital. And hardly knew where we were going or what was happening. After several hours of waiting, we were taken to one last doctor.

Jai Jai wheeled me and Brenner over to the new doctor. Brenner was in bad shape too, but not as bad as me so he helped in whatever way he could for me. They helped me sit into the seat before the doctor’s desk. I remember thinking , “Wow, finally some air conditioning.”

She questioned me about the village in the mountains we had been in, and said we had to wait longer for the blood results to come. I remember being on the verge of tears because I didn’t want to leave her office to go back into that hospital crammed with people, sticky with humid heat while also feeling like death. But before I could say a word, her computer made a ding sound. She shockingly announced that the results had just came in. The words that came out of her mouth and then Jai Jai’s translation will remain in my mind for the rest of my life.

P U R E.

Miraculously our blood came back completely pure. Those were the doctor’s exact words.

“Your blood has come back pure.”

They were all a bit confused because our symptoms screamed that we had a mosquito-borne illness, and yet from our blood they could find nothing wrong with us at all. It was a good report, one that we received in shock. God was working miracles on our behalf, but we still couldn’t feel it in the physical 100% yet. I had to stay at the hospital for several more hours to receive fluids. My husband had to return to the place we were staying at in order to be with our children, and Jai Jai had to go back to work but would return to get me after the fluids were done. Which meant I would have to remain there by myself for several hours. I had no phone and was afraid to be alone there but at the same time I was too miserable to protest. I laid on a stretcher in a room with thirty other people. Some lying on stretchers, some were nurses busying about. It was crowded, with no privacy, but it was air conditioned and so much better than the waiting rooms. I tried to will myself to sleep but I was in so much pain that I couldn’t. The fluorescent lights were so bright behind my eyelids, and I shivered despite the heat. I was hooked up to several IV’s. Nurses, doctors and patients spoke and laughed around me in a language I didn’t understand. It was a lot for me. But there wasn’t much I could dwell on or worry about in the moment. I just wanted to live. I did continue thinking that I had no way of keeping track of time and was a little worried about Jai Jai not coming back for me. Slowly the overhead lights began turning off and someone wheeled me out into the hallway where I laid on the stretcher for another eternity, or so it felt. The waiting room was surprisingly empty. This part of the hospital was clearly closing for the day. Several employees came near and talked to one another right beside my head. I had no idea what they said but they soon left. I was a alone in a dimly let hallway. Later someone else came up and took the IV out of my arm and walked away. No one ever told me anything but I wouldn’t have understood anyways. Finally a male nurse or hospital employee came up and began rolling my stretcher outside the wing of the hospital. He took me behind the hospital to an elevator in the back. At this point, after the fluids ran through my veins and hydrated my body, I was feeling a tinsy tiny bit better. So my logic returned to me and I began thinking about everything I had been warned about in coming to a developing country like this. For example, being an American young woman by herself, vulnerable, and without a form of communication. Something rose up in me, a will to live and a fight to be done with this insane situation. Despite my wariness, the man rolling my bed across the parking lot and hospital grounds did in fact take me into another part of the hospital. He left me at the front doors of the hospital’s main entrance. I laid on the stretcher in front of hundreds of people sitting in the waiting room wondering if my ride would know where to find me since I had been moved and the hospital was so big. I waited for a while, still no way of checking or asking for the time. And finally I made the resolve to just leave and walk back to the hotel that our team was staying at. I knew how to get back, but the walk was about two miles and I still felt horrible. Even so, I was done with this situation. So I put my sunglasses on, peeled myself off the stretcher and left without checking out.

Who knew if that was even something that was done here?

I didn’t at the time. I walked back to our hotel in the beating sun with my eyes half closed due to the intense pain in my head. I know now that I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly, but after so much pain and enduring such harsh conditions I was totally done. I wanted it to be over and I wanted to be with my family. Jai Jai found me one block away from our hotel and drove me the rest of the way back. He had to return to the hospital with my passport to check me out and get my medications. What an awesome man dealing with us wild, sick Americans. Still I made it ‘home’ to the hotel with my husband and kids after all of that, and I was pronounced to have pure blood! You would think things got easier. But not quite yet.

Afterwards, recovery was not easy. Despite the good report, our symptoms raged on and the situation remained the same. We practically laid on our backs in darkness for the next two days. As parents, we had to force ourselves to try and get up for the sake of the children, to care for them. And thankfully we had a friend on our team help us a few hours a day to play with the kids, as we hoped and prayed for rest and healing.

On the second day after leaving the hospital, I had had enough of this sickness, enough of crying out to God and seeing the same awful results in front of me. I had so much faith, I loved God with everything in me, I had given up everything to follow Him, literally, and yet we were still so very sick. I began to plan for the worst. I told our team leader that we needed to find a way out of this small village and get to a bigger city with a bigger hospital. I said that we needed someone close to us to come be with the kids, and maybe we needed to be flown back to our home in Norway or even to the U.S. if this sickness went on any longer. We couldn’t take it anymore. The entire situation had become too unbearable. Brenner was in an even worse condition than before, I wasn’t doing any better, and the kids were tired of sitting in our tiny hotel room all day everyday. I felt helpless. I wanted my husband and I to be healed. I felt like a failure. Failure as a Christian, for not having enough faith to be healed. Failure as a mother, for not being able to care for the kids the way I normally would. Failure for getting so sick during a mission trip we prayed for months for. I felt like a failure, for all of it.

The agony of my great weakness and my great need for God came crashing into me in a way I had never felt before.

I laid in bed with my eyes closed, tears seeping slowly between eyelids, hoping for a slumber that wouldn’t come. And so suddenly I felt God lean over me and say, “I am taking care of you.“

I saw the shadow of a figure hovering over me. I heard the whisper. I felt the pressing of someone leaning over me. I’d have thought it was a dream if I could have actually fallen asleep. It was real.

I am taking care of you.

Did I imagine that? How could that be true?

Is this what being taken care of looked like?

I genuinely felt so baffled that God would say such a thing when nothing about my reality looked like care being given. My shock was not malicious, I genuinely contemplated what caring for a child looked like and wondered in what ways this could possibly be that. Still I recognized His voice and I grabbed on to His statement as if it were a rope descending into a dark pit in which I sat at the bottom of. I wrapped this glimmer of hope tightly within myself… and slowly a sound sprang up in the pit.

A distant song began to stir within me like an echo of old. It steadily grew louder and louder, and I soon felt l like I was being electrocuted with the power in the melody.

All my life, You have been faithful.

First, it was just a thought in my mind. But immediately upon thinking it, the truth resonated within me. It pulsated through my bones, bringing warmth into my aching joints. The song pumped with my blood, beat through my heart, and I felt a real revival, from death to life, spark inside me.

All my life, You have been so, so good
With every breath that I am able
I will sing of the goodness of God

I opened my lips and with a cracked whisper I began to sing this song to the Lord.

As I whispered the song, I actually felt the pain behind my eyes start to fade away. Very quickly I was able to open them both. The pain receded instantly in one eye, and then slowly, the other. The pain in my body began to leave too. Joint by joint. Muscle by muscle. At last, I sat up. I placed my feet on the cold tile floor without any pain in my brain or body and it was then that I realized what just happened.

I was healed.

It was a miracle. A real healing miracle from God. When I was able to give nothing, God came in with everything. He saved me, as He always has. All my life He truly has been faithful. Something about meditating on His goodness in my life, even when I didn’t feel good, even when I could no longer see His goodness, something about remembering His goodness changed everything for me in that moment. He was caring for me as He always has. That was a knowledge that was so above me, I still don’t understand it fully. He is my Daddy, and He is good. Despite what I see, and despite what I feel the goodness of God is a tangible flame of truth that can pierce through the darkest of nights.

I jumped out of bed singing this song, “Goodness of God” by Bethel Church. I was amazed! I began praying for Jesus to heal my husband, who still laid in the bed and then I took the kids to play outside. I could now be outside in the, once excruciating, bright sunny afternoon. While I was out, my husband also cried out to God for healing and he received instantaneous healing as well. We saw God move in a way we never had personally before. We went through our lowest valley, but God showed Himself in so much glory. He is faithful and that is something we will never forget, something we will shout from the roof tops. God is faithful. Trust Him. Believe.

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 

John 15:16 NIV

This was a word the God gave my family when we arrived to Thailand, and it remained true through our entire journey there. The knowledge of His faithfulness is one of the fruits that we will carry to the ends of the earth. Be encouraged, friends. God is with you even when you can’t see Him. God is good even when your circumstances don’t feel good. Remember all that He has done, remember His goodness.

Now my family and I are back as missionaries in Norway. We are confidently unsure but unafraid of the unseen journey that lies ahead. We have been miraculously healed and have endured some seriously hard battles. Taking up our cross is not easy but it’s not about us really. All the glory goes to the Father. And one thing we know, He is worthy of it all. Wherever He calls us, however He calls us, He will never leave us or forsake us. He is a good Daddy, and He cares for us. Even in the wilderness. Even in the desolate places.

And that I now know without a shadow of a doubt to be true.

They May Say I’m a Dreamer

“Look, this dreamer is coming!”

That’s what they said before Joseph’s brothers plotted to kill him out of their own fear, jealousy, and selfish ambition. They were too focused on Joseph to seek God in their own destinies. If they asked, they would be told of all the unique and world-changing promises God had for each of them. One big purpose being that they would, together, become the great, twelve tribes of Israel. The brothers only saw their present circumstances, while Joseph saw his future.

“Look, this dreamer is coming!”

I sense the Lord is saying that this statement, this taunt, this mocking jab towards one’s purpose and calling is clanging loudly throughout the earth still today. It is the sound suffocating a child’s wonder and creativity out of her, wavering her direction to go up a success ladder of consumerism and personal gain. It is the deceitful whisper telling dreamer’s of change to point their guns at one another.

It is the sound of the enemy.

“Look, this dreamer is coming!” His finger, pointing at you in disbelief; preceding a plan, an attempt, to silence your voice and capture your identity, to kill your vision and crush your dreams. It is here, encompassed with this feeling of being stupid, so stupid, to believe in such big dreams, that many are stuck. Listening to the devil’s taunt on repeat, mocking who they could be, the dreams they once had, the calling that was too big. It is the sound of the unbelieving taunt, the unbelieving sin, that so easily entangles us.

Coming in agreement with that unbelief will bring about an inner torment that will rewire your brain from its original design. And soon your personally-designed, real purpose in life becomes so lost that it is now you pointing your finger at the other dreamers of the world. This has been me many times.

For so long humanity has listened to this clanging symbol, labelling the dreamers from the normal people, believing the unbelief, and hence, never stepping out into the fullness of Christ. But I sense that God is saying, first,

“Enough is enough.”

Enough of settling for the lie, and remaining outside of the abundant kingdom life God has in store, right here and now, for His beloved.

Oh the dream! His dream for His children.

That the body of Christ would walk as one Bride in the fullness of Christ, the glory of God made manifest in her, the abundant life that Jesus Christ died for her to live.

What if the key is this…

What if we were all made to dream? Made to cast vision for the impossible to become possible through Christ in our lives?

I believe we can.

Second, I sense that in this season the Lord is awakening the dreamers to dream once again. He is transforming that taunt, meant to snuff out our fire, into a steady beat for us march to in pursuit of the goal for the prize of the upward call in Christ (Philippians 3:14). And He wants us to know that there is a tool we can use, a belt that we can fasten upon ourselves to secure us against the unbelieving taunt from the devil. God is highlighting the belt of truth for His people to put on once again. In this season God is calling us to boast in our weakness, boasting in the truth. The truth that our dreams can not be accomplished without Him, without God’s all-sufficient grace. This is the armor covering you, His armor. This is the light, the light of Jesus Christ, keeping your eyes fixed upward. This is the melody, the song of deliverance, surrounding you, and playing louder than the unbelief. You are loved. You have a purpose and a calling. And Jesus? Jesus is coming back, and He is calling His Bride to ready herself. To realize that she carries the kingdom of God on earth, and to not merely be a hearer of the word, but a doer.

If we step into this open invitation from the Lord, an invitation to dream again, could we unite as one body in Christ and celebrate each other’s progress? Could we not only dream the impossible in faith, but also see it come to pass? The miracles, the healings, the deliverance, the chains falling off of nations? Could we see in our lifetime the glory of God covering the earth as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14)?

I believe we can, if we are willing.

There is another piece to all of this that the Lord is reminding us of in this time as well. Our walk of faith, our obedience to the call, will not come without challenges. You see, we might think that Joseph had a special calling. But God doesn’t show favoritism (Romans 2:12). Your calling is just as big as Joseph’s was, and his dream came with many struggles. Yours will too. Joseph was betrayed by his own brothers, sold into slavery, shown favor, but then betrayed again and thrown into prison. Still, God never left him. God never stopped working things out in Joseph’s favor. Even though Joseph was brought low. Even though it seemed that the odds were always against him. Even though his circumstances didn’t line up with his dreams. Joseph believed that God was able. And He was. Through it all, God brought the vision, the dream to pass. I can hear Him whisper to us,

The hardships were part of the dream coming to pass.

To press on in this new season, we must know that our present, past and future hardships are all being worked together, by God, for our good.

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

Romans 8:28 NKJV

So love God. Dream again. You are called. You have a purpose. And no matter the trials that lie ahead, remember that God is working it all out for your good. Believe, not in yourself, but in Him who is able to do exceedingly, and abundantly above all that you could ever ask or think (Ephesians 3:20-21). To Him be the glory forever and ever.