Week 1 - Adversity

Told you my life was really full and busy.  My Saturday night post has turned into a Sunday morning entry.  Kind of funny how it turned out.  I sat here with the title posted for three hours.  In fact, I think it counted as a post since I have no idea what I am doing and how to make it go away.  I didn't know what to say. I knew I wanted to talk about adversity and how God grows us in our troubles.  I know I want to focus on that this week during my quiet time and search for gratitude and growth and relationship with my maker through the study of the topic of adversity,  but what would my angle be.  Little did I know it would come to me right where I was.   As I sat there, my life circled around me.  My home is a hub.  At one point there were ten people in my fifteen hundred square foot cottage.  I sat in my red plaid chair, hence the title of my blog, and observed it all.

I know as a single that it is not healthy for me to hang out with just single women.  If you are a single, make an effort to surround yourself with healthy married couples as much as possible.  Single parents need to see examples of how healthy couples work together.  Yes it can be painful, but singles can breed bitterness if left on there own.  That being said, I have many lovely single friends, who by the way make an effort to have married friends.  On the weekends however, when married couples often do couple things the door of my hub is always open.   

Two of my friends were here last night.  Both very different.  Both with very different backgrounds and lifestyles. Both very grounded Christians who live out their faith in totally different ways.  They are both believers.  They both have suffered great adversity in their lives. Through deaths, divorces, loss of jobs, They both at the age of 44 are living at home with there parents. I look around at many of my other single girl friend, even some who have remarried, and see how God has turned their ashes into beauty.  They are way more beautiful now than they were  on D day, and I don't mean physically.  I am nine years older, fifty pounds heavier and  a whole lot more haggard looking than I was when I moved in with my mama with my babies to escape from my life, but God has grown me.  He has seen me through.  He has delivered me from huge adversity and allowed small nagging adversity to continually remind me that he is always there.

1 Peter 1:6-7
In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 


Father God,
I have been going through the motions.  I have been singing but not for you.  This morning as I sing on the worship team, may my faith prove genuine and result in praise, glory and honor to Jesus Christ and may he be revealed.