And They Lived Happily Ever After...The End

And They Lived Happily Ever After...The End

"... “Naked I came from my mother’s womb,

And naked shall I return there.
The Lord gave, and the Lordhas taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.”"

Job 1:21

While scholars can't agree exactly when Job lived, there seems to be a consensus among some theologians I have read about, that he lived sometime after the flood and just before Moses, maybe the early part of Moses' life time. However, he was a real man who had a whole book dedicated to his life in God's Word. 

Job was a prosperous man with a strong faith in God, a large household including: seven sons and three daughters and many possessions. God's word states that he was considered "blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil." Yet, he endured  numerous hardships all in one day, greater than the average man ever had!  Job lost his seven thousand sheep by lightning, or as the Bible puts it, " fire from heaven". The Chaldeans formed three bands, raided the three thousand camels and took them away, as well as killed his servants by the sword. Five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred female donkeys were raided and taken away by the  Sabeans,  who also killed more his servants by the sword. Job's sons and daughters were also crushed and killed under the oldest brother's roof while they were eating and drinking wine as the book of Job tells, "a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house and it fell on the young people." Through all the loss, pain and sorrow, Job never "sinned or charged God with wrong. He held on to his faith in a merciful God! 

Still, Job endured more! He became covered in sores from head to toe, even lost his peace of mind. Surely he must have felt depression over take him and insanity creep to the edges of his mind . In fact, he cursed the day he was born. I've been in that state of mind before, almost there last night. (Oh the places the Devil can take you, if you let him.) His friends, thinking they were helpful surely weren't, by trying to put the blame all on him and some sort if sin he must have committed. After all, why else would God allow all this? Job's own wife encouraged him to curse God and die! See, Satan was trying to shake his marriage too. Job held fast to his faith, he never gave up, trusting in a God who is good and loving through it all. 

In the end, Job's life was restored with twice as much as he had before! His friends came back, he gained a new family of seven sons and three daughters and he lived to a good old age, and saw four generations of descendants. The perfect "And they lived happily ever after...The End" story.

Not that my life has been as rough as Job's, but those who have followed my blog or at least read my first post knows, I've had some tough struggles before I lost everything. However, like Job I have had everything restored and gained even more and better than what I had before. Like Job, my life isn't a fairy tale, happily ever after, sure, but "The End"? Not quite.

Job gained his family, possessions, and wealth back. However, knowing our God, it wasn't just handed to him. I'm sure there was work involved. Man, going through raising that many teenagers again, that's enough work for anyone. As silly as it sounds, all of that just dawned on me today after crying most of the night and morning.

I was crying about how hard life is. It is a struggle, it's not fair. I posted some of this pity party on FaceBook last night: My Amazing Man is currently working 2 jobs. The day job has turned into 30 hours a week, and the evening job 40 hours a week. I'm down to one job that I'm feeling quite burnt out on, after 15 years of the same type of work. When I had more than one job, it was so mentally and physically stressful. Now, we're still just barely making it. I hate that Tim works so hard and when his body is tired and sore, he keeps going. I can't find a better job to replace my current one or as much as I don't want, find another job to add to the one I have that won't kill me. 

We have such a great desire to get more involved in church and make more connections. We have a dream to move into a house of our own and expand ministry roles. We want to be able to help and bless others more than we're able, especially family members who really need it. My heart aches for all the things I desire but feel unable to do. I don't want "things", I've learned to live with very little. It's the connecting with people/friends outside of social media including my husband, I really miss and want. As well as buy groceries and pay the bills.  

 I haven't forgotten my blessings. "God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good."It could always be worse, I've lived way worse before! This is just a different kind of struggle. I know God will and is walking us through it even though it seems so dark now. He won't let go of our hands.

 

Everyone wants their "happily ever after...The End." I think especially in America we're conditioned to believe that because we're Americans we don't have to work as hard, land of the free and all. As I look back on all the things I'm crying about, as real as they are and as painful as they are to me, they are first world problems.

I still live in the best country in the world, even though many of the people living here seem to be making some poor life choices that affect our nation. It's still better than others. My husband and I may not be serving the Lord in the capacity we feel led to yet, but we are still free to worship Him. We're free to choose whom we want to marry and be an equal partner in that marriage; with out being hidden away, abused and tortured. ( I am more than aware in some cases it happens in our country, but it's not acceptable) which is why I have an Amazing Man in my life. Our rent for our tiny apartment may be crazy high and difficult to pay, but we have a place that is warm and dry. Our cars may be in some desperate need of work and payments are behind on one, but we have TWO. We may not have the jobs or careers we like, but we have work with Sundays off. God didn't guarantee a 40 hour work week. In Biblical times as well as countries around the world today, people work from sun up to sun down seven days a week making a fraction of what we make, if they have a job at all. And people in our country want to cry about not having paid maternity or paternity leave for months at a time. Or paid for this or that, because other countries ( who are going bankrupt by the way) are doing it. People want to cry about all of these false social injustices in our country while turing their heads to what is going on in the rest of the world. We are a spoiled nation and it is easy to get caught up with everyone crying, "it's not fair". 

So, we may be barely making financially it at this time, BUT WE ARE MAKING IT, and better than many others in the world. I don't know everything God is working out in us and I don't quite know what the lesson to be learned is. Although, I do know the plans He has for us is to prosper us, not to harm us, to give us hope and a future! He said so. 

Prosperity, hope, and a future doesn't mean life with out a struggle and hard work. Our human idea of prosperity is very different in God's eyes than our human eyes, I'm sure. Monetarily, God's economy is very different than ours.  Anything worth having, including a good life is worth working hard for.  Even if I have to piece together jobs that cause fear and anxiety because they are so out of my box and maybe somewhere deep inside a small part of me felt it was beneath me, if that's what God leads me to, I shouldn't turn it away. I should stay faithful in ALL THINGS AND IN ALL CONDITIONS, because HE is faithful to me! Besides everything good in this life is a gift. And every gift is only temporary.

Where is your faith today? Oh to have the faith of Job. When life is at it's worse don't give up. Like Job, He's not done with you yet!