You might think making myself vulnerable to meet new people, or learning a new culinary skill, or pushing my rickety body to run, isn’t much of a repertoire for an out of the comfort zone way of life. But they are extremely uncomfortable. On the other hand, they remain barely classified as vulnerability when these are areas fully within my control. What is truly stretching is when God takes me to areas not within my control wherein, I doubted I would live to describe.

Once entering the out of my Comfort Zone Pastor’s Wife status, I had more than my share of encounters. And yet, God thought my world needed to experience the very thing I always said I would never live through; and thus in 2006 He allowed more than my little heart could manage. As I visited with my female, medical doctor before we were to move to a whole new state (nothing new), a whole new group of parishioners (nothing new), a whole new just about everything except for the husband and daughter in tow (first move without our oldest two)…I didn’t think I would make it because of what had rocked our world earlier in the year, but for some odd reason, she felt I would be okay. Maybe she knew enough of my testimony and counted God as someone to lean on. I am not quite sure. All I know is I was a mess!

And the next three years would prove just how uncomfortable life had become while focusing on asking God for a way out, even if that meant I was the instrument by way of ending the pain! However, my doctor was right! God kept me under His wing (even though I could not feel it at the time). And now these 24 years of looking back over all that He allowed, I can see how God was always calling me to trust Him!

Yes, this is very ugly!

Yes, this hurts!

Yes, this is not what I would want in a perfect world!

Yes, this will be for your good one day!

Consider it all joy…when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  James 1:2-3

There was so much I did not understand, there was so much I couldn’t get past, there was so much He was calling for total dependence and vulnerability in my letting down and not striving with His purpose. He wanted me to know HIM and trust Him and obey Him.  And He knows what it will take to move us out of our false securities! I praise Him every day that He kept me on this earth long enough for me to get it! To get what I never could understand and never will fully, but I can now lay it all at His feet … those blood-stained feet that went to the cross for me and all my pain and sufferings in this life…He wanted me to fully rest in Him. Oh, how I love Him! Oh, what a joy it is to push myself OUT OF MY COMFORT for HIS GLORY, because He will shine through! He is the radiance in this “little light of mine”!