Starting Over when it's Not My Idea…

Fresh Start, Redo, Starting Over… It sounds good when it’s your idea. But when it isn’t your idea, well that’s a different story.

Starting over when someone decides they don’t love you anymore… The job you are working at doesn’t work out… Or God tells you to move when you’re perfectly content where you are…

None of these fresh starts sound fun. They don’t fit into anyone’s plans.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t fit into God’s plans.

He knows they serve a purpose. His purpose.

God knew the heartache was coming. The layoff was on its way. The breakup. Even the guy who swerved in front of you, causing you to be late for the important meeting.

HE KNOWS IT ALL. AND IT IS ALL FOR YOUR GOOD.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t stink while you’re going through it. A lot of the time it is a long journey. Most of the time it isn’t a quick fix like we want it to be.

I have found it to be so in my own life, and I don’t doubt you have either. Most of the time the lessons we have to learn to take a while because we are stubborn people.

When I was trying to get my degree in interior design, I went to a college on the quarter system in Atlanta. It was grueling, fast-paced, and I was very sick. We didn’t know it at the time but I had mono. Mono and Fibromyalgia DO NOT go together very well. I made it a year at the college before I had to quit school and move home.

I was so sick and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong. The doctors told me I would be in a wheelchair and paralyzed by the time I was 25. It was a terrifying diagnosis for someone who was only twenty-three years old.

I spent a year in bed. Terrified, alone, scared. Crying out to God for help and understanding. I literally never left my home, because I couldn’t do anything but sleep.

But slowly, over time, I got better.

I was able to get some energy back and over another year, I was able to get my life back together. During that time, I realized with Fibromyalgia, I could not go back to a school with a quarter system, I need a school with semesters because 15 weeks was better than 10 weeks to get work done.

I was able to research and found Georgia State would be a better option for me. I applied and was accepted to start in the Fall of 2007.

Looking back, those two “lost” years from having mono gave me time to re-evaluate my career goals. Choose a better school, which would work better with my illness of Fibromyalgia, and ultimately lead me to meet some wonderful people by putting me closer to the church, Mt. Paran.

God used my time at Georgia State to further my writing career. A lot of what happened during those years ended up in my novels.

They say hindsight is twenty-twenty, and it’s true. Looking back, I can clearly see God’s handiwork in my life. It’s much harder to see His hands working when I’m in the middle of the crisis, but oh, is it easy to see after I’m through it.