Trials, temptation, whatever you want to call it.......

"We never have more than we can bear. The present hour we are always able to endure. As is our day, so is our strength. If the trials of many years were gathered into one, they would overwhelm us....but all is so wisely measured to our strength that the bruised reed is never broken "

" So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall! No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. "
I Corinthians 10:12-13



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Sometimes I think that God has a lot more faith in me than I have in myself.....and I am so deliriously glad that He does. Some of the best things I have in my life right now have come out of the worst circumstances I have survived. These trials are things I would never choose for myself. People always quote the famous poem about choosing to take the road less traveled, which is a nice thought, but I don't think that it usually works like that. Rarely are we given an opportunity to look at two choices, one seemingly easy and another difficult, and are able to "decide" which one to take. Granted, I can think of times where it has happened, but not very often. Usually our most difficult of journeys are thrust upon us without much input from us on the matter. Who in their right mind would choose to go through some of the things people have to survive in their lives? I certainly know I wouldn't.

However, if I were to never face such dark times, points in my life where I wonder what the point is to go on, when I think that if one more thing in my life were to fall apart I would lose my mind, and I feel as though I can only see a couple of inches ahead of myself because the pain seems to cloud my view and prevent me from seeing clearly, if I had not gone through those types of experiences, my life would not be what it is today. I would never learn how much I actually am able to survive through. Sometimes I look back and wonder, how the hell did I make it through that? What gave me the motivation to keep going?

Which leads to the real point of all this: if trials never came my way, I would never have the opportunity to see how incredible and powerful and faithful God is! He is the only reason I made it through anything; He is the motivation for me to keep moving, even if at times I barely seem to be inching along. I know that He is patient and will crawl along beside me. It makes me think of the foo-foo love songs where the woman talks about how she wants a man to not walk behind her or lead her but to walk beside her. That's how I see Jesus, walking along beside me wherever I go. This literally brings tears to my eyes right now because I feel so undeserving but so unquestioningly loved at the same time.

The sad thing is, I am human, and I need to be reminded of this from time to time. I try so hard to leave everything in my life to God and trust Him to work things out and when things do get difficult, I try to turn to Him for my comfort and guidance. Unfortunately, it's so easy to try and control everything myself, and when that doesn't work, to look to those around me whom I care about to fill the holes in my heart that are left vacant when I push God away. I've been doing this a lot lately, and with one friend in particular, and to that person I must say that I am truly sorry. If you failed me, which I don't think that you did, then it is my fault because I set you up to fail; no person in this world can fill the part of my heart that is reserved for God. Please forgive me.

On a side note, I want to say a bit about the difference in translations of the Bible. First of all I've learned I need to spend more time memorizing scripture because it took me 30 minutes to find this verse in a Bible verse search engine. I remembered the basic idea of the verse, but not where it was or what it said specifically. So that was kind of embaressing! Anyhow, I finally found it and it was very interesting to compare the different translations. I chose this one because of the last line: "he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it." Another version instead of saying "stand up under it (temptation)" it said "so you can push through it." When thinking about temptation and trials, I like to think of myself as not only pushing through the pain and hardship, but standing up under it thanks to God's strength.