Shaped on the Potter's wheel

If you belong to God and you're still alive, then He has something He wants you to do (perhaps many things) Otherwise, He'd bring you home to heaven to be with Him. For years after I fully commited my life to Jesus, I wondered what He wanted me to do. How could he possibly use little ole me. If you knew my life and my condition when I got saved, you would definitely agree.

I was born into a broken home. Actually, it was more than broken. It was fractered in so many places, it was more like a pile of rubble. With my mother often gone and no father in the home, I was pretty much left to my own devices. I had no adult mentor to teach and guide me. I was shy, insecure, short, and chubby. When I became a teenager, my face blossomed with the ravages of acne. I was the kid in school who everybody made fun of. The girl who never got invited to sit at the popular girl's table at lunch or go to their parties. So, I pretty much withdrew inside myself and lived in a fantasy world, making up stories inside my head where I was always the beautiful heroine being rescued by the handsome hero.

Things got worse in my 20's. I went away to college still as insecure and misguided as I was as a kid, but now I had total freedom. I was desperate to be loved, valued, and to be someone. So I lived my life in wreckless abandon. For 15 years, I tried to find love and the meaning of life through all the things the world told me would bring me fulfillment. They didn't and I ended up divorced, ruining my life and my children's life for years to come. I struggled with money, with jobs, with relationships still seeking some way to end the pain in my heart.

Then at the right time, Jesus found me deep in a dark, slimy pit and He lifted me out and washed me off and showed me the narrow path to life and love and peace and unspeakable joy. That was 15 years ago and I can now say, I am complete in Him. Jesus was and is and always will be the answer for all my pain, heartache and for the emptiness inside me.

I used to look back on my earlier life and be mad at God for allowing me to take the course that I did--to cause myself and my family and many others so much pain. The Bible says I was called, chosen by God from before the world began. He knew me and shaped me in my Mother's womb. Then, why couldn't He have just given me a good home, a strong, Christian father to raise me? Why couldn't He have sent people into my life at an early age to tell me about God and lead me to Him? I could have avoided all that struggling, all that pain.

But something in a sermon I heard today made it all make sense. Every single second of my life was planned by God for a purpose. He was shaping me for a task or tasks He wants me to complete for Him, for His Kingdom. Nothing was wasted. Not even the horrible sins I commited. No, I don't believe God was pleased with those, but He allowed me to go my own way, knowing what I would do, and even before I did them, He was planning how He would use them in my life to shape and mold me and form me into who I am today for His purpose.

Everything, from my sad childhood to my unpopular teen years to my wayward 20's. All of it has enabled me to write novels today that reflect His power, His Glory, His might, His incredible Love. If I hadn't gone through what I did, I wouldn't be able to write what I write today. That thought just blew me away! And it should you too. Whenever you look back at the tragedies in your life or even something you're going through now, God has a plan! If you are His, He can turn the most horrific circumstances into something good. Listen to this quote from Spurgeon:

"Faith's way of walking is to cast all care upon the Lord and then to anticipate good results from the worst calamities."

Awesome.