I had a dear friend tell me once, that what I was going through was about eternal things.  I thought I understood this.  I thought I knew.  I did not….

So nearly two years later, I was having a deep conversation with a dear friend and God dropped this on me.  Like a TON. OF. BRICKS.  It has become so real in just a few days, that I am completely consumed by it.  It’s all I can think about.  I just keep asking God to keep me here – in the realness of it.  I don’t want this to fade.  Because it changes everything.

“He has specifically placed me in this family….My own family, my husbands family, this life.  He put me here because He knew that I would do what I am doing.  He knew I would say yes.  He knew I would stand.  For love.  For life.  For healing.  For restoration.  He made me for this.  For this season.   If I had said no or I had decided to quit, how many generations would it take for Him to raise up another to do this thing?  Would it take one, would it take four, five generations?  Who would choose to learn love?  Who would choose to stand for my husband?  Who would choose to stand for healing for all of the things that have wounded our generations, for all of the things that are dark and ugly that have created such damage and brokenness?  Who would stand for my children?  Who would fight for their lives before God…fight for breakthrough so that they won’t have to battle the things that our histories say are inevitable?  Is there another who will pick up all the ugliness and bring it before God without caving beneath the weight of its darkness?  It’s not about me being comfortable!  If I have to suffer to change things for my sweet husband, my children and their future generations, then I must to do that. I have to!  My kids will have enough of their own issues to deal with!  Why do they need to have our junk and all the junk of the generations before us?  They don’t!  If I have to suffer for that, then I can finally say I’m okay with that!  It’s about eternal things…not about my momentary comfort in this life!  I’m willing to be uncomfortable in order to affect the lives of my family!”

Does any of this make sense?  It’s not about me and my story.  What is your story?  Are you suffering?  What if you learned how to love in the middle of your suffering and God changed the course of your life and the lives of your family?  What if, by choosing to accept your “thorn” as Paul did, you opened the door for God to completely transform what you have accepted as “impossible”?  What if by choosing to say yes to Him, you made it possible for Him to change everything?  What if?

I probably don’t know you.  And I probably don’t know your story.  But I do know that God placed you in your family, in your marriage, in your life for a specific purpose.  For real.  That purpose is not just to live a “status quo” life and die.  You are meant to change destinies with your “yes.”  You are meant to be powerful in your stand for God.  Your pain, your suffering…are meant to move mountains. They are meant to change history.  Can you do something hard, something against your grain?  Can you choose to quit running from what hurts and ask God what He is trying to do through your suffering?  Can you stop looking for someone to tell you how to make the pain go away and ask Him what the pain is for?  When we are in physical pain, it is an indication that something is wrong and needs to be dealt with, not avoided.  What if you were the one that God placed right here, right where you are, to change an entire family, an entire generation?  What if?

So this life I’m living, this season I’m in, is not about having the perfect marriage, the perfect family.  It’s not about having a white picket fence and happiness forever.  It’s about eternal things.  It’s about God going to ANY (and I mean ANY) lengths to save a single soul….and probably a lot more. It’s about love.  Period.  And I know the end of the story.  God Wins.