God Uses Unlikely People

I am not sitting down here much, though I'm just as awake each morning.  With everyone off to work and school so early I'm usually running around making breakfasts, lunches, doing laundry......

I haven't committed to much this semester.  We are doing piano so far and an outing here and there, but we are trying to really buckle down on school and I'm actually really enjoying that.  It may be a little harder for the kids to get used to after their long Christmas break, but it's helping me feel a little better!

I did get a little bit of a shocker last week though.  I'll be going in for a biopsy next month for what appeared like a suspicious image on my first mammogram.  It is literally microscopic in nature, what they call "calcification", but when they magnified it on a second mammogram, it made them want to take an ultrasound to clarify.  I saw the image on the screen myself.  These tiny little dots the size of grains of salt were there, I saw them, too, but when they zoomed in on them, they appear to be in a circle, all joined together which could be something or it could be nothing.  Either way, I have to go back which, really, is no big deal.  In the examination room, when the technician told me they wanted me to come back in, I said, "Are you serious?!"  For one, I was NOT expecting that.  Two, I DON'T HAVE TIME!!!!!  The appointment was over a half hour away, plus you have to allow time for parking, plus waiting, plus, plus, plus........I REALLY WANT TO HOMESCHOOL MY KIDS AND YOU HAVE TO BE HOME TO DO THAT!!!!!

That's my rant for the day.  I have not been concerned really since then.  If there is something to detect, then I'll deal with it when that time comes.  I'm still living in a bit of a bubble assuming it is nothing.  But I'm also learning and trying so hard to live more by faith and less by fear.  Faith has really helped eliminate all my stress with respect to this.  So, it's not denial, it's really that I trust the Lord and I see it as a test.  Will I trust Him even as the year starts off with this kind of news?  I almost laughed out loud when I first got the phone call to come back.  It just seemed like such an obvious test.  I wasn't going to fall for it.

This week I got another great reminder of how God uses the most unexpected people.  Once again, it was through my son's easy reader.  I love how the author of these books takes classic Bible stories, like the one about Jacob and Esau, puts them into easier language, but how the message is still the same.  My son is just reading it to get better at reading.  I read it to help him learn, but I end up hearing God's voice as I read it with him.  So cool!  Anyway, Jacob had just finished deceiving his father, stealing his brother's birthright and blessing and then running away because Esau wanted to kill him.  The next story he's lying down with a stone for a pillow and God speaks to him in a dream, reassuring him that He'll be with him!  I immediately was in awe how God could use such a man, after all he had done.  It reminded me how we certainly don't understand all of God's ways by any means, but at the same time, I was encouraged.  If God could use Jacob and promised to be with him, despite all his faults, then He can do the same with me, in my life, with my kids.  I certainly have no shortage of faults and it seems that has passed on to my kids as well.  But really, all throughout the Bible, that is one of the main themes, isn't it?  That God uses the most unlikely of people to accomplish His purposes.  I've been taking that theme into the new year.  Every time I want to doubt my skills, my abilities, I try to remember Jacob.

Now, I can really say, I have no idea what the next year, let alone month, holds, but I know another main theme in Scripture is to not fear and that God will be with me.  So I just think on that....