Excited

         It is amazing to me how clearly I can see God moving in my life in the midst of this storm.  I began a bible study at church this week with Jamie.  We are completing the Beth Moore study on David.  As soon as the church announced the study, I knew it was meant for me to attend.  I began looking foward to the study.  "Life" has always prevented Jamie and I from completing the other Beth Moore studies we started.  This is going to be the one we finished.  I know it is in God's plans for Jamie and I to be completing this study and this time in our lives.
        In studying, I see how God is using this to prepare mine and Jamie's heart for our ministry.  God lifted His hand and allowed Satan to move in our lives when He did and how He did because He knew it would NOT tear us from Him.  As a youth, I remember hearing the story of Job.  I thought, how, after everything that God has allowed to happen can he still love and praise God.  I tell you from personal experience of having your world ripped from beneath you, it was easier than I thought. (Please understand that I by no means am saying I have been a happy, cheerful person through my storms.)
        In Beth's study, she asks the question, are you allowing God to live smack in the middle of your life?  She then state's that she bets if you are, you have crossed a few Red Seas, tumbled down a few walls, and escaped a few lions.  The point she is trying to get across is that we serve a LIVING God.  He is alive, active, and He wants to make us living proof.  There are no words that can explain the feeling that goes through me when I read those words.  God wants to make me living proof.  This is why He allowed my rape. 
        When we trust and believe in God, when know that He can take what Satan means for bad and use it for good.  My life and what I had planned disappeared that night in July.  It has taken two years for me to understand that it was never my life to begin with.  When I set out my goals, I never once asked God if it was his timing for me to start a family right after college.  His plan has been, from before I was concieved in my mother's womb, for me to minster to women who have suffered like I have and walked where I have walked.
        Never, when I was growing up would I have thought God would lead me to where I am.  I hated having to speak in front of people, much less carry on a converstion with someone I did not know.  In full discloser, I was the child that cried at my sixth grade open house because it was a new school full of people I did not know.  Now, I am hearing God tell me that Jamie and I are meant for so much more.  We are to share what we have been through; the good, the bad, and the ugliness of it all.  I know this means that I will have to talk to women I do not know, sometimes even to groups of women I do not know.  However, I have no doubt that God will give me the strength and the words to speak to these unknown women. 
        I close tonight simply with this verse for thought.
     In our greatest weakness, He is strong.
              2 Cor. 2:14