God's providence

A favorite quote on providence that we used on our wedding invitation and also is framed on the wall in our bedroom.

.......God's providence. As usual the other evening John and and I were on the couch watching an episode on Neflix (I think this time it was Bones). I love our quiet evenings together once the kids are down for the night, the toys are picked up, everything is tidy, the day's work is done, and I can relax and enjoy some adult time with my husband :-). When we watch the pause button gets hit a lot (true story, since I like to prop my feet up on the coffee table I've gotten quite good pausing the tablet with my big toe. I'm sure any readers really wanted to know that, haha) and anyways this time we were  discussing a trial we are in the midst of and got into a good talk on God's providence. It was encouraging and helpful to me, so I thought I'd post what I remember here to come back and look at for a reminder in the future when I am feeling discouraged by life.

What we mainly talked about was our past singleness. Not everybody knows this, but John and I met online in December of 09 through a Christian singles site. I had kind of been pushed out of my comfort zone to put up a profile and John saw it and messaged me right away. We talked a little, but his circumstances overwhelmed me at the time, I realized I was not ready for that, and wisely told him right away. John asked if we could still be friends, and I agreed. What followed was over the next couple years we messaged each other every couple months, asked how the other was doing, sometimes messaged about a particular post on facebook, but in general kept up with the other one's life in a friendly way. There was nothing at all romantic about the relationship though I confess the thought of us marrying someday was kind of there in the back of my mind from time to time. Those years were plain old hard ones, sure plenty of happy memories, but very hard as the Lord had a lot to teach me about being a Christian, life, communication, etc, etc. Let's just say we both agreed that we were very glad we had not married when we first met each other. It would have been hard, harder than it is now for sure, and neither of us was ready. The Lord had a lot to teach us as singles before He started teaching us as married people!

Yet as we could see all that, we saw the Lord's kindness is letting us get to know each other enough to be comfortable together very quickly when we actually met in person. What we realized later too was that neither of us talking to anyone else in the same way. John was the only man I was messaging with, and although he talked with a number of other women in his search for a wife, I was the only woman he was writing to somewhat regularly, and he didn't have that kind of relationship with anyone else.

It truly is so comforting to me to look back and be able to see God's hand and how He has worked out details in our lives in a perfect way. Yes, there are still questions I don't have the answers to as to why the Lord has, and is allowing certain things, but I know that He is doing all things well. Hence my writing all this down to remind myself next time I am all stressed and forget this lesson. That happens regularly by the way. It's comforting too as I look at our church situation and the difficulty we have been through with that (though things are better than they were. I'll have to post on that eventually), to know God has a plan, to see problems in the family and to know that again God has a plan in that and most likely someday we'll see the good in it!

 Every creature is that to us which God makes it to be, and from him our judgment proceeds. As we must see the events that shall occur in the hand of God, so we must see the hand of God in the events that do occur, and acknowledge him with thankfulness when we have reason to call it his good hand.