A Spring of Joy

Driving over to UVA in this afternoon for an MRI and pre-op appointments… I look around me, and it is breathtakingly beautiful these mountains and valleys, but I feel like I am wandering in the wilderness. My heart aches with deep anxiety, and yet I desire to honor my Jesus with how I walk through this valley of the shadow of death. This wilderness; this mixture of beauty and fear is not a place of punishment, it is a place of preparation. This wilderness feels wrong; it feels like my enemy, but it is actually where God is teaching me His strength in my weakness.

Peter Foristier Photography

So I gaze out the mountain our car has just climbed and I pray for strength to keep climbing the mountains. For this climb is not wasted, it is preparing me for what He has next for me. And whatever HE has for me is never wasted no matter how fearful or painful it will be. Jesus did not avoid the wilderness, He spent days there trusting in His Father. And so I will follow in the footsteps of my savior and I will walk through this wilderness with my Father.

Kind friends will you pray? I have an MRI (which includes my nemesis the nasty old IV) and then we meet with the doctor for a history and physical. In honesty I’m afraid. Will you pray for a heart of trust? …for so I’ve heard “‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus…”