You Take The Good...

I like to keep things organized. I try to plan ahead whenever it is possible. Ask my friends. I will send out a list of summer activities including birthdays and other special events. I like to try to keep things neat and in order. 2020 has been a year for the books but one of the things that hit me especially hard was the death of one of my classmates from college. We weren’t especially close in college but through Facebook we chatted a lot. She was pregnant nearing the end of her third trimester and it was really exciting. She was proposed to on New Year’s Eve 2019 and she wrote about how special it was for her. I commented and wrote her messages about how extremely happy I was for her. Her engagement story wasn’t unlike what I’ve heard from most women. Because it happened to her it gave me so much hope about my own future. Imagine my shock and horror, when I found out about her death and the death of her unborn baby girl Z. Losing her hit me so hard because it was like her life was just beginning. Her happiness. Her future was all just gone. Literally she was online commenting and sharing posts and then she wasn’t. She was otherwise healthy.

I started with that story because over the years I’ve been trying to prepare myself and my body for childbirth. I had been diagnosed previously with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and to be honest it scares me. It scares me to think that one of the things that I want most in life is to be a mom (after I become a wife. The order is quite important to me) may not happen. As you guys know, I’m single. Again to be honest, being single is a struggle for me. I have good days and not so good days. I am not a person who believes that you shouldn’t question God. (the whole book of Habbakuk is questions and answers) I know that God is sovereign. Even this saying is cliche. We don’t know exactly what we are saying when it. One definition from Merriam Webster says that sovereignty is defined as freedom from external control. Let’s also reference Romans 8:28 as well ...all things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. 

Putting those two things together, I’ve concluded that all things mean ALL THINGS. It means that good and especially the bad. It means that God doesn’t have to provide me answers on what happened to my friend. Or even why I have PCOS. Why I have to struggle twice as hard to lose those extra pounds than a normal person. I just know that it has to be a part of a larger plan. I am reminded of the poem “The Weaver” by Grant Colfax Tuller. I won’t write the whole poem a stanza instead. 

“My life is but a weaving 

Between my God and Me 

I cannot choose the colors 

He weaveth steadily.”

As I continue on this journey of life, I have to know that he has chosen the things that would color my life. Allowed the things that would build my character. That he has stopped the attacks that would have caused me more harm than good. 

Love, Life, and Jesus, 

Evelyn Denise