Hello friends and fellow guests! I hope you are all finding ways to stay warm in this Eskimo like weather. If you are an Eskimo then this is probably something close to spring for you...do us a favor and please don't rub it in that you don't get cold. It is now February, which means next month is march, which means there will be no more snow and it will be warm, which means I can ride my Longboard at night...in a T-shirt, and shorts, and not have to worry about frostbite and/or black ice.
Anywho, God has certainly been working in my life this past month and I would love to share what the big man up top has been up to! This Month has been a challenging one in many areas. To fill you in, (because you guys are like family to me), my older brother found out he had a tumor on his brain a few months ago. This led to many doctor visits and many late nights for the rents. Side note: when I say the "rents," I mean my parents. Get it? paRENTS....ok so late nights for my rents, especially my mom as you can imagine how a mom's mind may wander when her son is going through something like this. The doctors said that it needed to be removed. So this past weekend, my older brother Brett went in for brain surgery! SO CRAZY! Its hard to think how far technology has come. The surgery took 5 hours and it was successful! Praise God! I remember walking into the ICU room after the surgery to see my bro for the first time and he was so out of it! Kind of like the YouTube hit "David After Dentist" ha.
So the story gets better when my bro tries to eat blue jello after not eating for like 36 hours and he barfs it back up a totally different color! Any guesses which color?....Anybody? Try neon-green! It was magical. Yes I am a dude and barfing is gnarly(when you're watching someone barf..) . It really started to kick in how helpless Brett really was when the nurses came to change him, because he could not even change himself. It Got me thinking about how truly helpless he was the whole weekend. When you go into detail and think about everything that happened. The whole 5 hour procedure (anything could have gone wrong in those 5 hours...the doctors were cracking open his dome piece and wiggling their fingers around his brain!), the recovery...him just waking up after surgery is a miracle in itself. Point being that everything happened the way it did because God was in control of the situation. Brett truly was helpless, my family and myself, we could not do anything besides turn to God and pray for protection and Gods hand over the doctors and Brett's recovery. There was nothing we could physically do to help Brett. It was ALL in God's hands.
This got me thinking about my own life and the lives of people in general. For the most part, we are helpless. We try and be in control of our own lives by making our schedules, surrounding ourselves around the people we want to be around, doing what feels good rather than doing what we know is right...we try to control our lives. The result of this usually ends up somewhere way more south than when we began. I hate to break this to you friends, but we were not made to be in control of our lives because we are dumb, and make decisions that only end up hurting us. We were made to have a relationship with Jesus and let him control our lives. Sure we can still make decisions on our own, but those decisions should be based off of what the Holy Spirit is leading us to do, versus what YOU want to do. The more I see life through that lens, the more I begin to see that I am not in control of things even when I want to be. The end result of this is realizing that I really do need God in my life, because without him, I AM helpless.
How many of you guys are tired of trying to control every aspect of your life? How many of you, no matter how hard you try to get your life back on track, just keep falling short? How many of you are discouraged because you don't ever seem to find peace or rest in your life? I know this sounds so cliche, but its so true; surrender your problems to God because you cannot fix them yourself. Bottom line, when you are in control, you are going to fail. When God is in control, things are going to work out in the way God wanted them to work out. You were not meant to be in control of your life, but the minute you cast your fears and problems on the Lord and trust that He is in control, that is the minute that you will realize how much you have been missing out on the beauty of life because you have been obsessed with controlling your future when it is not yours to control. The Bible says in Psalm 55:22, "Cast your burdens on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved." Stop trying to control your life, there is so much more to live for!
Thanks for stopping by friends! Its always great to have you!
-R
