Christian Living

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Lately, for whatever reason, I have been reflecting on a lot of the serious mistakes I have made in life. Just as everyone’s, my ‘friends’ have always chanted, “ Boy, I bet if you knew that was coming, you would have done things differently”. Well, I am not so sure that is true anymore. I older I get I see the overall plan that it took to get me from point “A” to the point I am at in my life. I remember the brash, arrogant hot head I was in my younger days and now see the calm, caring soul that I am now….well, not quite, but you get my drift.

It has been a long and winding road for me, even if I was a Beatles era baby, and it has taken nearly every step I have made to get me through it. I am not proud of a lot of things I have done, nor would I ever willing disappoint my God, given perfect self-control. But the long and short of it is that all the bad, stupid and regretful things I have allowed in my life have guided me to a walk that is wiser, more aware, more forgiving and more receptive to the path God wants me to walk.

There is no way I could have gone from my prideful, self serving ways to a gentler me without the bits marks on my mouth of God’s correction along the way. I see in hindsight the importance of all the selfish things I asked God to rescue me from and He did not. I was disappointed and angry that He did not care or respond and I had to walk through the fire alone, only to realize after the fact, that He was there crying beside me as I took every painful step down the road to improvement. He greater desire was for my betterment, not my wish to be rescued.

I have had both knees replaced with metal joints, and make no mistake, the surgeries were followed by indescribable pain. But without the pain, I would still have my old worn out, worthless knees. My life has had many incidents of indescribable pain, without me having gone through, I would still be the worthless me. To actually be of any value to God, I had to refined with fire, many times over, until I was ready to see His ways in my life. Are my knee replacements perfect? I can hardly bear putting my weight on them initially when I stand, I can’t been down, and I fall often, but they are a vast improvement from what I had. Am I perfect from my trials by fire? By no means, I stumble, I fail, I let God down, but I am vastly improved from what I was.

When I look back on the pitfalls I have been through, I see the value of the lessons I learned from each one. If, just if, I had a magic time machine and could go erase the knocks life has handed me, would I? I am not so sure.

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