2013... Looking Back

As I was looking back on some of my first journal entries of 2013, I smiled at the fact that the themes on my mind in the beginning of the year, are some of the same themes I'm ending my year on.  The verses I copied down, the words I wrote all seem to be focused on three things.... fear, waiting, and trust.

I think back to where I was the first week of January... the fears in my heart, the unknowns of what this year would bring for our family, the way He was asking me to trust Him in all things.  I had plans and dreams, but what did God have planned for me? 

God had 2013 planned to be one of those years where I will one day look back and see the many ways He worked on my heart.  Is the fact that I'm still struggling with days of not trusting Him as I head into 2014 a failure on my part?  That I'm still writing down some of the same verses at the end of the year that I was in the beginning?  Not at all.  As I look back at the hard days, and sweet days... days I had to fight for joy, and days where hope seemed so far away... those are the days that stick out in my mind as some of the sweetest days from Him.  Where He had to walk so close to me so I could just take the next step.  Even though they were so hard at the time, those are some of the moments I treasure now as I look back on my year.

And now I'm looking into 2014, knowing this will be another year of building my trust and faith in God.  Trusting him as I am mama to 4 little ones, trusting Him with school decisions, trusting Him to guide us at parents as we train up the children He has given to us.  I think God only truly grows our trust in Him by making us walk through those hard days... when we are stripped of ourselves and must fall totally depending on God.

Trust and assurance grows by repeated conflict.  When we have been...

brought very low and helped...

sorely wounded and healed...

cast down and raised again..

 

And when these things have been repeated to us and in us a thousand times over,

we begin to learn to simply trust the Word and Power of God.

~John Newton  

 

I need to remind my heart that things are never out of God's control.  That through the hard days, God's faithful shines and brings me to a place to see His power and sovereignty.  That He is shaping the events in my life in a way that will highlight His faithfulness.  Because that is what He is... faithful. 

 

Faithful to bring me to the other side of this pregnancy.  Faithful to give me all that I need to be a mama to these four little ones.  Faithful to lead us in upcoming school decisions.  Faithful to be there when we don't know how to parent through the challenging days.  Faithful in big things... and as He has shown me in the last few weeks... faithful in even the smallest details of my life.

 

I'm so thankful for all the ways He walked with me through 2013... and I'm even more thankful for the assurance that He will still be my Strength, my Hope, my Confidence, and my Father in 2014.