It is truly amazing how God takes us one day at a time, one moment at a time and prepares us for His next steps for us.  During the readiness time it never seems to look much like a plan.  For me it looks much more like chaos in my life, circumstances that don’t come together, folks in my life struggling with me or around me  and I often can’t do much to off-set the problems, etc.  However, as I continue to live through these circumstances and learn to surrender to God’s leadership each time in them, I find that He is truly right there in the midst of it.  It seems He often waits for ones involved to seek Him.  God is truly a patient God–man certainly isn’t characteristic of this patience!  It is after the chaos settles we can begin to see God has always had a plan–it just wasn’t being sought out.

I’m writing the above paragraph because over the past couple weeks I have experienced the chaos.  I’ve written about some of it in the daily blog entries.  God seems to be preparing me for some next steps.  He’s begun to shed some light on it too, I believe.  I was called yesterday afternoon by an old high school friend.  I don’t know if I mention him by name in my book, don’t recall, but he was one of the few Christians in my life at that time.  He also truly lived out the Christian walk during this time and has continued to do so to this very day.  In fact, he is a pastor in the Portland, OR area.  He called because he and his wife had just finished reading my book.  He invited me to come to his church to speak to his congregation “if I ever do such a thing as that”.  I have only done that 3 times at this point, but this morning I can sense God’s hand in wanting this to grow.  It’s as though He is telling me the time is now for me to begin stepping into this process of passing on His work in my life.  There is some anxiety as I write this, but greater than that is the clarity I see for doing it.  The friend who called shared with me that his wife had been sexually abused and she read the book first.  She told him she got much help from it and would like for us to meet.

So, if I can help people address the chaos in their lives by sharing what God has done in my life, I want to do this, even if it means standing behind a pulpit to do so.  I sure don’t want to be a person who has a key to helping someone find relief from a real problem and I keep that key out of fear of exposing my own story.  This story of mine is our story–God and me.  I want to be a good servant of His Kingdom work.  “To God be the glory–great things He has done!”  I want to share the great things with those who are not aware of them.