Good

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

‭‭Psalm‬ ‭37:4‬ ‭ESV‬‬

I have spent the last couple of years looking backwards in order to work through a lot of the emotional and physical hardship I and my family have gone through.

Going over what has happened, facing it, coming to grips with it, then doing what is necessary to move forward in your new normal is a lot of work.

Your story doesn’t even have to be like mine. You understand what I am saying.

However, we have a tendency to spend a lot of time living in the past and recalling all of those events that we fail to look right in front of us and see all the good.

Because there is plenty of good.

I have been so empowered as of late. The year 2021 has had it challenges, to be sure, but God has shown me what is possible when we place all the we want right at His feet.

What happens when we trust Him with it all.

Start listing them, shall we?

I have been praying for over a year for a place of my own for myself and the kids. -God answered.

I begged for friends and community.

-God delivered some pretty incredible people in my life, as well as old ones that resurfaced and showed their support and love toward me.

I prayed for a job that would allow me to be able to support myself, knowing that I wasn’t going to get much in support from my ex. I wanted the freedom to be able to provide without his assistance. Really, I wanted to be free.

-Wow. Did God deliver. Dare I say that things are better and much more stable than ever before. When for so long I was led to believe that I needed the other person in order to make it, God made it very clear that NO. I. Did. Not.

I wrote in my journal about my desire for a good man. Who would lead. Encourage. Care for me. Allow me space to be myself. Loved the Lord more than I did. For someone who would care for me and treat me with kindness. -Oh yes. God brought him as well. Our story is a pretty cool one…..and so much better than what we originally remembered. I am not exaggerating when I say he is literally the best human being on the planet.

There is so much more. So much more I could say about the good that has come from those hard moments. I hardly remember day one of when my world fell apart. That memory barely registers. Instead, now my heart and my mind are overflowing with the good ones that have overshadowed the dark ones.

I have learned painful lessons, but delighting in God and allowing Him to do what was necessary in my own life, tearing away at the things that no longer needed to take up space and showing me the better way…….isn’t that just like our God?

How cool.

Now, I want more good. I am so happy. I tend to wait for the other foot to drop or for something catastrophic to happen, because that is usually what happens, right? You can’t have too much good going on. Gotta have something bad happen to even it all out. At least, that was my thought process.

Instead, you and I should just look at what is in front of us. Celebrate the good that is in our life.

We don’t need to constantly remind ourselves of the tragic and the terrible. They are there, in the past, where they belong. We learn the lessons. We move forward, at times it may feel like at a snails pace. I want to implore you to stare right in front of you and see the good too.

What I listed above? Those are my good. Those very things make me happy. My people make me happy. They give me joy. I smile more than I have in the last several years. Freedom makes me happy.

God has answered more prayers than I ever thought possible. While I wasn’t hopeless, I definitely felt like everything was just in the dark and that I didn’t deserve to be happy. I believed and was told that God didn’t care about our happiness, but our holiness.

So being happy wasn’t an option. Until I decided that yes, it was.

Being happy is good. Yes, happiness can be circunstancial, but I also think it is a choice. You can choose to hate everything and anything because life is difficult, or you can choose to embrace what is and choose to smile. Nothing fake about it. There is something to be said about having a happy disposition.

That is good. That, I believe, is a gift from God.

Why do you think we are drawn to happy individuals?

Every day, I am going to wake up and write out what is good. I have so much good in my life right now.

And I want more of it.

Tiffany Rhea