Ready, Steady.........

Having school aged children September always spells a time of new starts, as they academic year kicks off, the weather changes as we move into Autumn, it's a time for new courses, in my work it's an exciting time of planning and actioning major events, I love it!

BUT this year I've not made it off the starting blocks, an innocuous cough from the summer has mutated into a horrid, wretched, infection/virus that has singlehandedly stopped me in my tracks. Doctors and Antibiotics and tests and more Antibiotics and more antibiotics, and steroids and inhalers and X-rays and even more antibiotics have not been successful in getting me well yet.

So I find myself waiting at the start line , seeing things happen around me, missing events personally and professionally, stepping back and watching others step in, dropping things knowing someone would have to pick them up....it's not easy....it's not me...it's not what I do.

When I run an event, it's a time when I'm often closest to God, because I know I do it all in His strength, I lean in to Him big time, I run into Him and I feel Him, I know my gifts are from Him and I love to see Him glorified as we serve people well. This time of illness has stripped away those events but has not taken away the closeness.

During this time I have come close to Him just as a "me", I've leaned in just to be, for the strength to not do but to just rest. It's been His way of nurturing and strengthening roots I had started to cultivate, His way of ensuring investments I had made into my own identity as a being not a doing, would not be wasted

This feels like His way of protecting the small green shoots that have appeared after major pruning. Great friends have come and watered my soul, with words and flowers and meals, hugs and cards, practical support, tweets and texts and FaceTime providing virtual handsqueezes, each one working along side Him , moving me forward.

My new term is coming and it's just so inviting and exciting, my Indian Summer and a purposeful spring full of blossom then fruit, I cannot wait to be under starters orders, and to hear that starting gun.

Until then, it's Ready, Steady, Wait........

Romans 8:28 ESV
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.