Climbing Up

I know I haven't been the most consistent blogger lately. Partly because there's been a lot of icky life things that have been happening and if I told you some of it you would either A) not believe me or B) start believing that Debbie Downer herself had taken over the Grits and Gossip writing responsibilities.

After all, who wants to hear about the struggles of my grief stricken family, the diagnosis of my grandfather, the story of having to take care of a beloved 14 year old family dog when she passed away a few weeks ago, my 4 bouts of car trouble in 2 months, and a less than stellar vacation? I didn't think so!

All of the above, combined with finding time to transfer life back to my home state has made me somewhat of a hot mess lately. I'm so scatter-brained that I actually locked my keys in my car while it was running in my rush to both cool off the car, take out the trash, and get to church with my dad on Father's Day. As my lovely brother-in-law so lovingly pointed out to me, Triple A may very well reject my membership when it's time to renew!

Don't get me wrong....I love being back in SC more than anything right now. And I really love my new job. I didn't think I would ever say that the 2 year job search was worth the wait to find something that I am fulfilled doing and truly believe in. But here I am saying that very thing!

I'm also here to tell you that I'm now a believer in the old saying that when one part of your life starts going well, the other parts fall apart. While my #1 goal for 2010 was to move back to SC, sometimes I feel like that's all I've accomplished in the first 6 months of the year! Sure it was kind of a big deal and life change to move after living in a place for 6 years. That's longer than I spent in high school or college!

I look around and see people who seem to have it all together. The type of people that are organized, never forget anything, have plenty of money, and things just seem to fall into place for them without much effort. It doesn't seem fair that some people have to endure struggles and hardships while others seem to coast by in some happier parallel universe! Of course I would love to be more like them. And absolutely hate that I sometimes doubt God's plan for my life or that He won't throw anything at me that I can't handle.

I received a much needed devotional message in my inbox this morning about Faith. The verse is Hebrews 11:1 which reads "Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."

The devotion eloquently said, "We focus on the mountain while crying out to God for help, wondering if He really will do anything. We need to remember what God promises and does not promise. God does not promise to remove the mountain or that we will even understand the mountain. However, God does promise to help us climb the mountain and He does promise to climb it with us. We must make the continual choice to fix our gaze on God and our glance on the circumstances."

So I pray for hope and healing and strength and faith. And I can't wait to see the view from the top of the mountain when I get to the top of this particular climb in my life!

Ironically enough, all of this talk about mountains makes me think of these two pictures that Randy snapped just before his accident....

I have no doubt that he had gotten to the top of his climb in this life.