Better late than never

Personal photo: my mom's favorite flower is the iris and I was taking some photos of them blooming. So many were in bloom but this one caught my eye. Its time is coming, it will be lovely when it gets here, but it does not need to bloom with the others in order to still catch my eye.

When I began this blog journey, I was determined to make one article a week, and publish it at 10AM on Saturdays. My thought was that if I posted in the morning on Saturdays, people could wake up and while enjoying their morning get a dose of the Lord and how He can change your life, while also sparking conversation and connection before a chance to discuss with others at church the following morning. I started writing the blogs early in the week to give myself time to write, edit, and plan for Saturday morning.

As time went on, I found my life getting to full capacity: Clay and I bought a house at the same time that my job became unsteady. We were moving 40 minutes away from where we were, we were renovating the house in every free second, and I was hunting for a new job. I get hired at a new company, am going through the growing pains of beginning at rock bottom again in my career, and then our little puppy wanders into our lives. All of a sudden we are homeowners, pet owners, and home renovators. We turn around twice and my nephew is being born, it is planting season, and the renovations continue to take time. I found my blog writing time dwindling and I felt as though I was never quite making Saturday at 10AM.

A couple weeks ago was the first time I considered stopping. I felt as though I could not dedicate the time I needed to dedicate in order to have a healthy balance in my life alongside a meaningful and successful blog. I was writing them late on Friday nights and finishing them on Saturday mornings, or just writing the whole thing on Saturdays. As I considered quitting on the blog, I decided that I like it, that I write because I feel as though I can make a difference in this world. I write about my faith because it is the single most important thing in my life, that maybe the way I see how God has worked and is working in my life, it could help someone else.

I am sharing this with you because I find myself writing just a short time before I had planned to publish this article. I was going to spend the evening yesterday writing it and having it ready for today, but I was hit with a migraine that sucked my entire afternoon and evening, rendering me useless on most fronts. And even though I might not make 10AM this morning, I am going to write it anyway, I am going to share the article and spend the time to express how we can all find God when we are feeling too slow to matter, too late to make a difference, and too determined to quit.

I use the example of this blog journey because we have all been on it together. But the reality is that it is truly a small example compared to the ways that we can feel useless because we think we have missed the deadline. Consider how often you think you might be 'too late' for something, believing we missed our chance, lost it because we couldn't get there on time. When we feel as though we might not be a tool for God to work with, we can become disheartened, disappointed, and lonely. With the pressure we put on ourselves to just get there when we think we need to get there, and then failing, the desperation can drive us mad. Because I think we can all relate to that miserable feeling of wanting to give up, missing our chance, and not making the deadline, I want to consider how we are still capable of making a difference, still able to get to where we want to go by a different path, and still successful in the eyes of God when we are just doing our very best.

Colossians 3:23 tells us "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ." I love this verse when considering how we can view time as our enemy, cutting off the chances we have in front of us, deceiving us into thinking we can get there the quickest way possible. It is directly telling us that if we work hard, and we are working hard for the Lord, we will be successful, that we will be rewarded with eternal life with the Lord. I cannot think of better motivation when we feel as though we missed our chance. God can see you trying to get there, can see how you are doing your very best, and He knows when your motivations are built on faith in Him. In this way, we are positively capable of making an impact, of being a vessel for His glory, and capable of getting where we need to be at the exact time God says we need to be there.

I titled this article 'better late than never' because I think we have all heard the saying but are pretty bad at applying it to the things we do, the goals we set, the faith we work on. We might come to believe in God's plan way later than we should, but that does not mean it is worthless. We might not accomplish something as quick as we think we should, but that does not mean we should abandon it. We might not even believe we need God's forgiveness for a very long time, but it does not mean we should stay away from Him when we realize we do need it. No, my friends, we should still set goals we want to accomplish, practice our faith when we see that we have much to work on, and come to God at any point in our lives. If we never do, only then do we become paralyzed in our ability to impact the world for Christ. It is so much better to come to Him later, to do things later, to accomplish things later, than to not do it at all. Philippians 4:13 reminds us that "I can do all things through him who strengthens me." This verse is not concerned with when we get there, or how we get there, but just reminds us that we can get there. With the Lord, there are no boundaries except for the ones we set for ourselves. In this way, when we stop putting so much pressure on getting there how we think we need to get there, when we need to get there, and so on, we can really find much more joy, much more power in our faith in the impact we might have by being part of God's plan, instead of just part of ours.

Romans 12:2 states "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." This verse can be directly applied to the temptation of abandonment of our goals, of our faith, of the things we want to do in life. When we become disappointed in our inability to see God's plans for us, we can remember this verse, can remember that everything in God's will for us is good and acceptable and perfect. Our plans for ourselves can be flawed, rushed, and tiresome, but the Lord's plans are entirely thought out, are designed specifically for us, and can help us leave a lasting impact in our hearts and in the hearts of others. Psalm 119:105 reads "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path," and it is valuable when we consider how we can lose hope, can lose our motivation when we are caught in the doldrums of this world. Coming to God is always the answer, and He will guide us to a place of peace and renewal of faith.

I am hopeful that when you feel a bit lost in your walk of life, when you feel as though you are spinning in circles and not quite getting there, and when you feel like you missed your chance, you can join me in taking a step back, evaluating how God's plan is better than ours, and remember Isaiah 26:3, which reads "You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you." God will guide us, He will make us a vessel for His glory, He will keep us at peace with His plan, and doing work for Him is always worth it, no matter when it happens. When I consider how perfect the timing of God is, the thought of flowers come to mind. Flowers are so unconcerned with when other flowers bloom; they care not how big other blooms are, when they bloom, how long they bloom, and so on. It is God's timing, and it applies not only to flowers but to us. Just because we might not be blooming when other people are, or when we think we should be, we can remember that our time is coming, that we are no less valuable for blooming later than others, and our ability to make an impact is not lost because our role in God's timeline is different than others.