The story of Job is a hard read.  A man, righteous and Godly, loses everything in horrible ways.  God makes an agreement to allow satan to challenge Job.  For someone who sees God as protector and provider, that is a scary proposition in itself.  Satan goes to work wiping out Job’s children, his wealth and his health.  While Job struggles and asks some tough questions of God, he remains faithful.  At the end of the story, Job is given abundance over and above what he had before.

Now somewhere along the line, I cannot help but think Job was wrecked by what he had lost.  Even in the abundance he received, I still wonder how he felt about what he lost, the scars and wounds that remained and how he moved forward after that season of life.  I currently believe he simply chose how he would live.  He chose.  It was a choice to live in the rubble or live in the present and live with hope.

The last several years of my life are littered with struggle and pain and tears that would overflow the Mississippi River many times over.  The years are filled with scars of battles that took their toll on my body and my mind and my soul.  I have had conversations with God that included words sailors may not know.  I have challenged him and shared my anger at him directly to him.  Through all of that, I had to make a choice.  Live in what was crumbling around me and the past that was gone or battle through the present moment and live in hope.  My friend Rick shared with me many times the need to see the present moment for what it was, the now and something that would pass.

Those moments passed and now I feel like I am living in abundance.  I have been blessed with a job that excites me and challenges me.  I have been blessed with a VSW who excites me and challenges me and gives me lots of hope for what the future will be.  I am surrounded by friends who have journeyed with me and prayed for me and shared words of hope, shared a meal, shed tears with me, loved me.  I am living in a time where I look forward to waking up in the morning.  On the whole, I am sleeping better than I have slept in years.

I am still tired.  Exhausted internally.  I still cry at times releasing the emotions that have been buried.  I feel like I am emptying the well of hard days.  I am still battered and bruised and scarred.

I’m all those things while I make the choice to rejoice in what is here and now.  I believe, like Job, that I appreciate this present moment much more richly than I could have ever appreciated it before.  I don’t see my job as just a job but an opportunity for now and for the future.  I certainly don’t see my VSW as just another woman.  No, she is so much more and I truly believe she was put in my path at such a time that I could love her and honor her and treat her in a way that is what Paul describes in his letter to the Ephesians.  I want to love her like Christ loves the church.  My past has led me to make that choice.  In this moment I will love unlike any other time in my life and I will take joy in the abundance that I have been given unlike any other time in my life.

There are still lots of struggles.  Money goes faster than it comes.  The house needs work.  There are plenty of other stress points but I get to make a choice and I choose to appreciate what I have in my life at this time.  I am soaking in the joy of what is now.  I see the rubble and use it to try and make better decisions now.  And, to know that “choice” is mine.  I get to choose this day whether I will be pushed down by the past or will be elevated by what I have today.  I choose to revel in the abundance of a intelligent and beautiful woman and the hope that she brings me and I choose to appreciate the job opportunities that are here today and what they may be tomorrow.

I choose to see the abundance of what I do have and will let what I don’t have work itself out in the details of life.

Grace and peace.