Blessings In Anxiety


When anxiety was great within me,
your consolation brought joy to my soul.
Psalm 94:19 NIV

In the multitude of my anxieties within me,
You comfort my soul.
Psalm 94:19 NKJV



Today is the first day of a new year. This morning I did as I do every year on this day. I looked through my last year of journal entries, regular journal, prayer journal, blessings and gratitude journals. There was so much there! I read and reflected, wrote a summary and then went to read my devotionals. In the first one I saw this verse from Psalm 94 and I just had to smile. That about sums up my year. There may be anxiety but God is always with me.

As I looked back over the many journals one thing was glaringly apparent. It had been a great, wonderful, terrifying, humbling, exciting, challenging, blessed year. There is no point in the past year where everything was as I believe it should have been. I have great concern for some of my children and grandchildren. There were health issues, that though minor were no fun at the time. There were deeper health concerns for some of our family members. There were job stresses, financial pressures and some things that were just different in ways that were neither all positive or all negative, just different, uncharted territory. There were heartbreaking moments that sadly have become far too familiar and brought with them some serious disappointments. And yet.... or as I love to say/write/hear BUT GOD showed up in every single moment. There were, in fact, a few perfect days.

Reading along some of the hardest times I saw joy, faith, mercy, love and grace, grace, grace. Yes, there were challenges, fears all that mess but there is no real defeat. There is victory over and over and over. There were blessings I never could have predicted and certainly didn't expect. There are two incidents of beauty out of ashes, one still in progress that I am delighted to be watching. That one, the ongoing one, is not only unexpected but what most people, myself included, would have deemed impossible.

Was it a great year? Indeed! Now a new one is starting and I do not wish you a happy New Year but a complicated, joy filled and blessed year. A year full of interesting events, with blessings that sometimes disguise themselves as challenges and with the deep, abiding, amazing love and grace of our Abba Father.

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