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Wednesday, April 27, 2016

A Time for Everything

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: Ecclesiastes 3:1

There's a skit that I have seen at camps and retreats more times than I can count. It has one major line, " Is it time yet?" The audience isn't sure what is happening and in their minds, they are thinking, "Time for what?" The question is asked over and over with the response always being, "no." The audience and cast members come to expect "no for the answer" and then to everyone's surprise it is time.

This is very similar to my life. How about yours? I have prayed and worked in my various roles in life. I remember thinking 18 years of raising a child is a long time to get her ready for life. Was it complete when I sent my daughters off to college? Absolutely not!! I thought that everything would fall into place for each of them by college. Oh, no! I remember, my oldest daughter was miserable at college. People told me that they had experienced something similar with a child and after a couple months it got better. That wasn't our story. She spent 3 semester at her university and was unhappy the whole time. We began the college search for her all over again at the same time her sister was deciding where she would attend. It was hard work. My job as a mother was heating up not slowing down. The second college was not a slam dunk but it was much better for her. Today she is married to a wonderful guy and they have great jobs and are mentoring and are guardians for 5 international student athletes. God's timing was not my timing but He was preparing all of our family for the things he had for us in the future.

Our youngest child is a son. He was diagnosed with a neurological disability in elementary school. It has often been "3 steps forward and 2 steps back" when it came to seeing progress. There was the struggle in first grade with composing a sentence from 5 words in a word bank. He couldn't do it. I would compose two sentences using the words and let him pick the sentence he liked. We moved slowly. When he was in 6th grade a teacher figured out how to engage him in math within the classroom. Up until that time, I had homeschooled math each day after school. I remember his jr. high English teacher helped him learn to answer a short essay question. Then there was high school speech. He delivered the speeches quite well but there was a big problem. It overwhelmed him so much that he couldn't get out of bed the next day after a speech. He began to write his own short papers without help in community college. It was painful for me to watch as a mom. He would shake the entire time he would write them. He no longer shakes but they are very challenging still.

There is a time for everything. This includes the struggle, waiting and the answer. Sometimes this process moves along quickly. But many times, God's timing seems slow. You see, he is concerned with developing His child. His interest is in character development, trust and dependence on Him and developing a closer relationship with his child. If you are in a season that is long and it seems like God is silent, He is at work. Every event in the current season has a purpose, HIS PURPOSE!