Discover How to Recover from Personal Defeat!

Broken, in pieces, cracked, damaged, shattered....does this ever describe how you feel inside? Do you try as you might to get organized, schedule, tackle to-do's, accomplish goals, but find you just can't complete the task before you?

I am seeing how God can use the little broken pieces of my life to create a beautiful stain-glass artwork for His beautiful glory and light to shine through.

One big sheet of glass isn't so pretty and frankly kind of hard to see light shine through. I dropped by a stained-glass artist store this week in our little main street downtown. The work in this shop was unbelievably beautiful!

The lady who ran the shop said her husband told her that she didn't leave to go to work she left to go play... and she agreed, saying, "I love what I do!" I could truly see how happy she was being able to create beautiful pieces of art for people's needs.

Well, I can also imagine how happy it must make God feel to be able to take the broken pieces of our life and to create them into an incredible design so perfectly unique to the needs of each person. How wonderful it is to be in the master designer's hand where nothing is wasted or tossed out as garbage, but each and every shattered part of our life is knowingly placed exactly where it can most precisely be redeemed, for God, for good, for glory.

This week has not been a victory week. The Kitchen, my step 1 in homemaking recovery, fell by the way side. It's not that I didn't want to continue the plan of last week. I was totally overwhelm with weakness, both physical and emotional. But in this place, God had a plan for me.

1 Corn 7:17 says: Where you are right now is God's place for you. Live and obey and love and believe right there (The Message translation)

How does one stick to a plan when she can't even think clearly and struggles get out of bed .... when getting dressed is a labor, arms are heavy (weighty) and thoughts are not always connected and clear?

What is key to all of this life inconsistency is that my core is the one and only eternal God! He never changes. He is consistent. He is just and fulfills His obligations and promises. He promises to never leave me or forsake me. So no matter how I am functioning, he is picking up the pieces to be used in my life masterpiece for good.

So in due time, when I do recover, I step up, take a deep breath and pick up where I left off. As soon as I regain a healthful consistency, I will set up the kitchen again and take the steps I explain last week on how to reign order and control in this zone of my home. It is all I know to do. I don't have to start all over again, I don't have to feel defeated, I just need to return to the ground gained and set it back up again.

I have been a zig-zagger in life. Start, unfinished, start up again, incomplete, start up a new area, give out, make it simpler, start a simpler plan, fall down, wipe the dust off and stand up again....

Why do I keep getting up? Because life is not over yet, and I still am victorious as long as I keep getting back up and trying to focus on what is important, to get back on right track. God is what is important. Life is all about Him, not me. The right track is His track. He doesn't need me. I need Him. He can carry on without me, I can't carry on without Him.

You see God did not promise me an easy life, a smooth road, no adversary.... in fact quite the opposite... I was promised a narrow, challenging, path full of trials and suffering.

But I am also reassured that He is still Sovereign, King, Lord of all and that no matter how impossible the odds, or the way things appeared to me by sight, I am to persevere and walk by faith -not by sight.

Faith not in myself, my ability, my strengthen, my success. The object of my faith is and always will be God! In Christ all things are possible, without Him nothing is possible.

So I aim my thoughts to be renewed by His, and surrender to His will to be once again, and to continually be transformed.

You know what is truly amazing - God never gives up! He never counts me out, drops me from the team. He never benches me to a life of idleness and defeat. He takes the raggedy, the broken, the torn, the wounded, the mangled and selects these souls to be His shining stars.

It is through my weakness that He is made strong, that His beacon of light can shine through calling others to come to Him. Others will see the beauty He is creating in the stain-glass window of my life.

I know of no other place you can receive this kind of acceptance or love than in the presence of the one true God.

In the light of eternity, having a functioning clean kitchen is very, very minor. An easy task to be taken on by the God who created the Universe in 6 days and rested.

Now let me just lean on Him, rest in Him, be restored and when He is ready. We (together) will snap the order back into the kitchen zone and move on to the rest of the household.

If my children never learn household organization from me, so be it, but they will learn that We have an enormous Father-God, that can see us through any trial, that is the answer to all life's questions and needs. They will also see that He carries those who are weak, for as long as it takes, until we can support our own weight and walk again.

My God be glorified through my life, through the victories and the defeats, may He use it all for His precious name to be lifted up in ways that I could never begin to understand or imagine.

God is looking for people who will come to simple dependence upon Him...At this very moment, He is looking at you!

The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and His understanding no one can fathom. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint. This is the Word of God - truth - spoken by Isaiah (Is 40:28-31) As it is written, let it be so in my life.