story time.

via Tumblr.

Over the past year, I've really started to see how purely wonderful it is to just watch how God works in peoples' lives and how dreams become reality. It's truly a beautiful thing to watch the Lord write a story. A few cases in my mind truly stand out. One is someone who was a part of my life in middle school. I watched her fresh out of college, saying that she would never get married at such a young age. I was there when she went out on a blind date. I was there when that blind date led to a relationship, and that relationship led to an engagement. That engagement led to a marriage, which led to a life that led them away, but to a full life. And that has now led to a baby. Another example was someone I had always wanted to meet and happened by the grace of God to meet during my time in Rosemary. I heard her lay out her hopes and dreams to leave behind a major career and have a baby and make that her life and to make a difference in the lives of other women. I watched that come to fruition 9 months later. In other cases I have watched people pray for years to be able to go to other countries and spread the Good News and who finally had the opportunity. The common denominator in each case is a desire to follow the Lord and His calling. A desire to serve Him first, and to ask Him to direct their paths. These dreams came to fruition because of a close walk with God. It's an example that I strive to live daily. So many times I want to go my own way and go down my own path, because I know best, right? Wrong. The best times in my life have been those in which I did life hand in hand with the Lord. Consequently, the worst have been when I chose to "know best."
The Lord uses the lives of others as a light to guide us to Him. He uses the lives of other to display the beauty of the story He is writing. He's writing stories about each of us, but they're all a part of a grander volume. Strive to make your story weave into someone else's; inspire someone else through your devotion to God and His will. That's a real resolution worth sticking to this year.