This Road I'm On by Bill Lee

Author:Bill Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography/Personal Memoirs/Religious/Religion/Christian Life Inspirational/Spiritual Growth
Publisher: Elm Hill
Published: 2018-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

As the months went by, I came first to accept and then to embrace the idea that this might be both the worst and the best time of my life, and certainly the most important and consequential time. Something big was happening to me and to my kids. It was a lesson that cost us so much in pain and loss that there’s no way I wanted to miss whatever growth or character development came with it.

I often told them during those months, “The four of you are experiencing something that most kids will never know—and because of that, as adults you will know things that most adults will never know and understand things that most adults will never understand. If you just stay close to God and allow him to be part of that process, then the things you are experiencing now, as painful as they are, will guide you in a positive direction. You will be uniquely gifted adults—not despite this terrible experience that you’re going through, but because of it.” I must have told them that a hundred times. And I believe every word of it. About my kids, and about myself.

I even started to look at scripture differently. Jesus talked about the abundant life. I used to think of abundant life as being happy, joyful, certain, peaceful. But in the months after losing Carol Ann, as I would read my Bible I began to see true abundance as being joyful in the midst of grief. Having peace in the midst of chaos. Certainty in the midst of uncertainty. I began to think of the abundant life as rising above your circumstances, as walking in fullness even when life is falling apart around you. Impossible? In the months so soon after Carol Ann’s accident, I sometimes wondered. It didn’t feel possible to me, but I came more and more to be sure that this is what Jesus came to give us. “‘In this world you will have trouble,’” Jesus told his disciples. “‘But take heart! I have overcome the world.’” (John 16:33, NIV). Clearly, if he was telling his disciples that they would have trouble here on earth, then he wasn’t planning to clear the road of any difficulties—he expected them to face them and learn and grow from them.

In fact, as James reminds us:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

JAMES 1:2–4

We should not only accept troubles in life—we should consider it a joy to face them, knowing that we will grow through them.

I’m going to have trouble in life. I know that—I dread it, but I know it’s coming anyway. I can ask God to spare me from it when he will, but that’s a prayer he has already told me he’s not always going to answer yes. So when those

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