Chapter 1

LIFE AS WE WOULD WANT IT....LIFE AS WE ARE GIVEN IT

The Beauty God Brings from Life's Upheavals

BY ~ Ken Gire

Chapter One

THE TERRIFYING UPHEAVALS OF LIFE

Upheavals. Just the thought of that word made my heart skip a beat. Then, he added the words terrifying and life and I knew that this wasn't going to be an easy chapter to dissect and "take in". If you didn't read my unusually LONG post from yesterday, this book is about, well, it's just as the title states. "Life As We Would Want It...Life As We Are Given It".

Throughout this chapter you feel the raw emotion of the stories he tells. Families that have suffered loss of children, friends & in some stories, entire villages. Losses through disease, natural disasters, freak accidents. It's truly a chapter that brought many tears not just to my eyes, but tears that spilled over onto the pages that I read.

There is so much about life that we do not know. We haven't a clue what tomorrow, next week, next month, or the next years might entail. Will there be upheavals? Will there be just one incident that shakes our lives and changes us forever? Will there be a season, however long or short, that leaves us wondering where we went wrong for all of these things to happen to us?

For our family immediate and extended, we have suffered great loss in many areas. We all have been shaken to our core at one time or another. As I look at my parents and how they traveled through these dark times, I noticed that they were more emotionally and spiritually prepared than I ever was. As I tenderly gaze at my brother's family picture, I see an underlying strength that lives within them that even now may not be totally revealing to them. I know them though, I know of their deep relationship and passion for God and all His people! Then I close my eyes and try to think of what people would say of me if asked where they saw me at in my relationship with God during these never ending vallies??? I can tell you that I know I did not at the time have the faith or relationship with God that I should have. Instead of spending prior years building a fortress in which I could run, I wasted that time on selfish desires and worldly matters that in no way prepared me for what was ahead. I wish I had spent time in His word, in His house, in His presence....I wish I knew more about God BEFORE these things happened rather than learning so much about His goodness AFTER!!!

In uncertain times, times of great terrifying upheavals of life, the ones that are filled with loss and corruption of our "before lives"... I agree with Ken Gire when he said that "at times he wishes he didn't believe in God because if we took God out of the picture, we wouldn't take the upheavals so personally. And though the upheavals might still destroy the landscapes of our lives, at least they wouldn't kick up any cosmic dust so that we spend a lot of time wandering in its haze, disoriented and trying to make some kind of sense of it." It would, as Ken says, "be so much easier to just say that the world is filled with randomness and chaos and bad things happen to all of us, and we should just enjoy what we can of life, thanking our "lucky stars" that bad things don't happen to us more often than they do."

I know after two miscarriages, my fundamental faith that was instilled in me through my parents and friends, saved me in many ways. But DURING the pain of losing my babies I would spend days upon days in tearful wonder of what I did to deserve this. What did I do wrong God? Why me? Why my babies? It was an emotional roller coaster of pendulum swings from the top where I felt God's control, to the depths of the valley where I questioned and was angry, shaking my fist at God. After all...God is love and if he is a loving God...how do these things happen??? And more selfishly, why do they happen to me?

We can all get crazy lost in questioning God and His perfect will for our lives. I wonder too what beauty could possibly come out of the tragedies that we have faced in the last 4 years. It also leaves me with an intermittent wonder of what upheavals might become of tomorrow and how long they would last. But I'm going to try a new approach to this crazy life of mine. I want to get closer to God. Closer than I've ever been before. I want to know Him and His word so that when the unspeakable happens, my fortress or refuge IS in Him and not in someone or something. I want to run and hide in Him and know that I know that I know He is with me and in His wings I will find shelter.

Psalm 46:1-11 shows us the truth of God's character. He is our refuge and strength and ever present help in time of trouble. He is in control and has got to have our trust or we will fail at any attempt to try to survive and see what beauty He produces out of the ashes. In times of upheaval, "Be still, and know that I am God".

That's all He is asking that we do....be still. And that to someone like me can be asking a great deal. But to be still and rest in Him is the origination of a strength to endure. We need to, at times, "cease striving" for the answers to our innumerable questions.

Wendell Berry writes in a poem of his what happens when we are still:

The mind that comes to rest is tended

In ways that it cannot intend;

Is borne, preserved, and comprehended

By what it cannot comprehend.

Ken Gire writes: "What we are asked to listen to in times of upheaval is the voice of the Great Artist Himself, who will one day bring, out of the upheavals in this world, a new heaven and a new earth. And He IS in the process of bringing, out of the upheavals in our life, a new heaven and a new earth within us as well."

Be still. Be silent. Find strength to endure in Him. Drown out the inner voices that the enemy so persistently and loudly scrams at us to weaken our ability to sit in silence for The One who heals and restores. Satan will stop at all cost to cause us to doubt, and in some cases cease to believe, that He, THE ALMIGHTY GOD, DOES IN FACT LOVE US!

We, as a family, have been in an incredible time of upheaval. It feels as if we live on a fault line, where earthquakes or tremors occur every day. It is discipline that keeps me at least trying to force myself back to His promise that He would never leave me or forsake me. I know that He has not based my life on a national seismic hazard mapping project thrust upon us by God. I know that there is nothing we can or can't do to prevent further quakes and the magnitude that they can withhold. I also, however, know that God does take the ashes and turn them into something beautiful. I know that as long as I abide in Him, He will protect me and that His perfect will shall be carried out. It doesn't mean that I don't hurt deeply or like Job, ask God why....It just means that at the end of this brief time here on earth....God is going to reveal to me the most majestic picture painted by The Artist of my life.

In His Grip~ And HOLDING ON!!!