Redeeming The Time

 

My daughter came home from her trip and enthusiastically told me all about her adventures to the Big City. It was a trip where they took a train and then the subway to get to their destination. Many of the girls had never been to the Big City, let alone ride on a train. I loved listening to the details of her excursion until she said with all innocence: Momma, you should start our own troop in our town. You’d be so good at it!

I had no idea how that statement said with such innocence was going to bring about deep regret.

See, five years ago my decade long marriage abruptly stopped and everything that I thought defined my success was turned upside down. I lost my house, my finances, my covenantal relationship, and my sense of security & safety. I went from being a loved wife and mother, to being an abandoned momma of 3 kids with one on the way. I was thrown into crisis mode, a mode in which I operated within for 4 very long years. The first 3 years I spent dealing with our daily needs, trying to make sure my kids were clothed, fed, and loved while giving birth and raising a baby solo. There wasn’t a lot of extra energy left to tackle more than every day life. Trying new recipes was few and far between, and everyday was spent doing what was was necessary to get through to the next day.

After the first 3 years of living in crisis mode, the following year was spent relearning and rediscovering who I was outside of what had happened to me. The year felt like it was a long process to get to a level equilibrium emotionally, financially, spiritually and in our daily rhythms but it was also so rewarding being on the other side of it.

…until that statement came from my daughters lips. “Momma, you should lead your own troop in our town!” It was then that the weight of what I had lost during those years of crises saught to settle upon on my shoulders. I felt in an instant the years stolen from me. It was my daughter’s first and final year in her troop, so if I became a leader, I would no longer be able to lead my daughter and her peers in this evening program, a program that was straight up my alley. I began to grieve living in the bottom two tiers of the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid for those precious formative years of my daughter’s life. I started to lament the fact that I would have been a kick butt leader if I had been happily married and not left on my own to raise those 4 precious children.

All of a sudden I felt this whisper inside of me. It was gentle and not abrasive. The voice said: “I redeem all time. I will repay you for the years the locust have eaten.” That voice stilled all of the other voices shouting at me, those voices of past regret, shame, hardship, lack and isolation. I opened up my Bible app and looked up what I had heard. I saw that it was from Joel 2:25 and in Ephesians 1. Thank you Holy Spirit for reminding me that God is my Redeemer and the restorer of time!

I want to encourage you today to take a moment to listen to the still small voice inside of you, whispering words of encouragement, promises, and hope to your situation. Look up what was said in the Bible, for the Word is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword. And then hold on to those promises for He is faithful to complete what He started in you.

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Devotional Verses:

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

(1 Thessalonians 5:23‭-‬24 ESV)

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

(Ephesians 2:10 ESV)