The Rough Patches

      I am a day dreamer. I enjoy scrolling through the future memories of my mental scrapbook as much as I enjoy flipping through the camera roll on my phone. A day, a month, an age ahead I will fantasize about everything from the food I am going to eat tonight to the food I am going to cook for my future man. When the trailer for the latest kid movie pops on TV I imagine and anticipate my lap full of popcorn and nieces and nephews; and the moment the commercial switches to yogurt I dream about a far off vacation to Greece that I will never afford. I am a thinker, a planner and a dreamer. It's fun for me and it saves a ton of money on XM radio.
   
     The best part about day dreams, however, is the absence of difficulty. In the moving pictures of my mind the popcorn never burns, kids don't need to go to the bathroom a thousand times during the movie, and my new husband thinks I could stand to gain a few pounds. No one imagines a life filled with pot holes. No one fantasizes rough patches. For that very reason, I am so grateful for the rough patches I experience with the Lord. If God were not real; if Jesus had not truly saved me and this was all just the work of an active imagination to cope with the difficulties of life (as Christians are often accused) then I assure you as an avid imagineer I would refrain from including rough patches. The awkwardness in my relationship with Him and the struggles I feel in my communication with Him are one of the many affirmations of His existence and His desire for real relationship with me, and with all of His children.

      I know He is real; I know He speaks; I am certain of it, because sometimes I do not like what He has to say. Sometimes I want to talk about things that He has moved on from, sometimes He wants to talk about things that I do not want to move to, and sometimes I do not want to talk to Him at all. I am not proud of those moments and I am grateful for His compassion and grace because certainly it is always true that the rough patches in my relationship with the Sovereign God lay squarely at the feet of this fallen, but redeemed daughter.

     I am so enamored with the life I dream, and those dreams give me ambition and goals. Those dreams give me contentment in where I am and drive to not stay here; but I am in love with the life I have, and this Thanksgiving I am most delighted for the rough patches and for the God who loves me enough to stick with me through them and patiently guide me through stumbling blocks of my own design. I love Him and He loves me - in sickness and in health, in good times and bad, always, as death will never part us.

"But in all things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:37-39 (NASB - emphasis mine)