"The Dullest Pencil Has a Better Memory than the Sharpest Mind"

At a book fair in first grade, I bought a book called My First Diary and filled it out with a special excitement I’ve felt about few things in life. Since then, I’ve always, always kept a journal. It’s my release and the way I deal with the things I can’t deal with any other way. Last weekend, I got stuck reading through the prayer journal I’ve kept through the past year.

The biggest thing I noticed was that man, last year, was ROUGH! I heard once that if you want to boil a frog (gross), you put it first in cold water and then gradually heat the water. Otherwise, the frog would jump out. I think that was the way the last year was. It started with high hopes and gradually stole away all my hope and energy (a little dramatic? Maybe.) Looking back, I could see how things progressed from not great to bad to worse to hopeless in the space of just a few months.

I’m so happy to be happy now. I literally forgot what that was like—to the point that I didn’t even realize I wasn’t happy. The dramatic changes of a new job and new place to live have brought to light such a stark contrast to the life in which I was stuck that I can’t help but realize how different things are now. I have so much more energy at the end of the day for LIFE.

I can see how God was still with me, even in the darkest corners of those days. Sometimes, I don’t think you can see that until you look back at the whole picture. One thing I wrote in my journal as a prayer (and here’s a disclaimer—I don’t think this is my original thought, but I can’t remember whose original thought it was…) was this, “You mold and shape me every day. You don’t answer the way I want, and that makes you a BIG God. If all you were was what I could imagine you to be, you would only be as big as ME, and I know I wouldn’t make a very good God.”

This was when I had applied for 23 positions in 7 schools and didn’t know what I was doing this year. This was when Luke had applied for just about as many and hadn’t gotten anywhere either. We had SO many times that we prayed, “please let us get this job,” and God’s answer had been no. As always, however, it all led to where we are now, which is better than anything we would have planned for ourselves. I know God has brought us into this “spacious place” (See Psalm 18 below) for His purposes, and it makes me want to grow close to Him now to learn how my life can be lived in gratitude to this big God who is capable of such dramatic transformation.

16 He reached down from on high and took hold of me;

he drew me out of deep waters.

¹⁷ He rescued me from my powerful enemy,

from my foes, who were too strong for me.

¹⁸ They confronted me in the day of my disaster,

but the LORD was my support.

¹⁹ He brought me out into a spacious place;

he rescued me because he delighted in me.