A New Day is Dawning

This is going to be a somewhat vague blog. I apologize in advance!

For the last two months I have been struggling with a certain issue. At first it was the occasional thought, but over time it has increased in frequency. I would pray and ask God to remove it from my mind, but then life would put it–sometimes physically–in my path.

Yesterday was the toughest day. I could not go five minutes without being “tempted.” I was losing the peace of the Holy Spirit I’ve had since the whole thing started. Every effort went into my mental battle. It was the first thought I had in the morning, the last before falling asleep.

I broke down in tears when praying in the car on my way to pick up Joshua from a friend’s house. “Why, God? Your yoke is easy and your burden is light. Why is this so hard for me? Can’t you give me some encouragement that I’m on the right path?” And then the song about man not understanding God’s ways came on the radio.

A friend came by the house and told an entire story that applied to the issue without me saying a word.

Again later that night, reading Ashley’s comment on the last post to my mother, I broke down in tears. “This,” I said, “should not be my struggle. I should be having problems with missing Kevin, or trying not to worry about my future. Instead, I feel absolutely nothing for Kevin. It’s like my feelings for him are completely dead, like a switch flipped.”

(And I have total faith that God will take care of us. In fact, just today an expected check arrived, but was THREE times bigger than I thought it would be.)

Was the issue I was struggling with a sin? I had labeled it that way in my mind. I had decided when my life changed that I would go a certain path, and this was a tangent to the path I had plotted out. But did the Bible speak against it? No. Did I feel like God was telling me to not think that way? No.

All the struggle had come from inside myself. In fact, when I began to question whether it was right or wrong, I saw how it might lead to God’s answer of a number of my prayers. “All right,” I prayed, “here I’ve tried so hard to do the right thing because of what my mindset was, but maybe I was doing the wrong thing because the ‘right’ thing was not in obedience to You.”

And the peace returned. I felt freedom to allow that thought in my mind. The conflict disappeared. Ever done the “right” thing and been wrong? Ever been grateful to God for never giving up on us thick-skulled people?

It’s only been about twenty-four hours, but a new day is dawning in my heart.