Sunday, March 16, 2014

Story of my life...

It's funny how when I was married I had a hard time remembering anniversaries and now I have a hard time forgetting them. Four years ago today (at about this time, actually) my wife of 8 years said, "I'm gonna go." And she never came back. Ninety days later we were divorced, which is the minimum waiting time after you apply for a divorce so obviously she planned to not come back since she had evidently been to her lawyer's that day. So, I was crushed. I loved her. Still do. About two weeks after that I was fired from my job and about two weeks after that I met with my new pastor and explained how there were at least three things he was doing that were not biblical and that I couldn't stay at that church where I had been a member for so long. I refer to those weeks as the trifecta of terror. I was left with nothing but bills. I had a house payment, 2 car payments and $26,000 in credit card debt that I knew nothing about until the bills started rolling in. I had no job, no money, no church and my partner, my help-mate, my soul-mate was on her way to Vegas with her boyfriend. There's more but that's enough. That's enough to tell you that I was in a bad way and that it would take a miracle to get me through. Fast-forward to 3/16/14 and I am out of debt, the pastor of a little church that I dearly love and dearly loves me back, and I have never been happier. Good luck? Good karma? Good timing? No. A good, generous and merciful God who is faithful even when I'm not. His math is fuzzy when it comes to money and I'm eternally grateful because there is no way I would ever be able to pay all that I owed. But I can stand tall and say that I owe no man so much as a dollar. It has all been paid and all I can say is thank you, Lord. Isaiah 43:18-19 says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." I believe Him and I am trying to forget the former things but every now and then it helps to remember.