This Time Last Year

For not having written here in almost two months, I should start this post with an apology.  However, I'm not going to do that because I'm not actually sorry that I haven't posted anything since July.  Life is surprising and the flexibility of having your own blog includes the freedom to refrain from posting.  

Still, a lot has happened in the past 8 weeks.  Since my last post I have touched four continents, visited two countries, completed two classes, ended employment at a daycare and started a 10-week student teaching program at a classical Christian school.  Not necessarily in that order.  Theoretically, I have a lot to write about, but I'm a slow thinker and honestly, I've been so overwhelmed by these recent experiences that I haven't been able to pen my thoughts.  (This post has nothing to do with the notable work of God that has been the last 8 weeks....if you want to hear about that, you will have to wait for another post which may or may not be written in the future or else email me.  I'm happy to oblige to some heart-to-heart talks.  Also, I would love to hear what God is teaching you too!)

I find myself at the end of September with a panic in my writing hand.  So I return to the computer for an outlet.  September is, hands down, my favorite month.  It's a month of seasonal transitions, also the month that my parents were married, and the month that I was saved at the age of 15.  And I was just thinking how fascinating it is to look back on where I've been and what God is doing in my life.  Most people tend to do this during the New Year.  My mom never goes to bed after ringing in the new year without saying, "I wonder where we'll be this time next year."  I tend to do my reminiscing during the fall.  I don't know why.  

So here it is: This time last year I was at school in Wisconsin stumbling from class to class with a nearly-paralyzed right hand.  In my free time, I was frantically looking for tickets online to get a flight to New Hampshire to see a specialist who would hopefully tell me that I wasn't dying of a strange malady.  And if I was, I reason to hope that she had a magic cure for that strange malady.  In plan B, I was going to go home and write my will. The girls who lived on my hall that semester remember coming in to use the microwave and tiptoeing around my sleeping self.  They also remember the day I packed up and said tearful goodbyes to a group of ladies that had come to mean a lot to me. That was this time last year.  It was submitting to a trial and letting God lay me flat.

This year, by the grace of God, I'm healthy (excepting a cold that I probably picked up on my recent travels) and about to busy with teaching 7-10th grade English to some of the brightest students on the peninsula.  I haven't had a "migraine" since February, my hand only twitches if I consume intense amounts of sugar (which I try very hard not to do), and I can't remember the last time I wrestled with the impressive list of symptoms that sent me home last fall.   

I don't want to belabor the point....but I just can't stop praising God.  He didn't have to heal me.  I had lyme for 10 years....and I just still think it's a big deal that in less than a year God freed me from it.  Still, there is one thing more incredible than that, I have been a Christian for 7 years this month.  I had been lost for 15 years...and He didn't have to save me.  I'm studying Romans and one of the things that Paul reminds his reader of is the fact that God doesn't owe anything to anyone.  In fact, the gospel is set up in such a way to emphasize that very point.  This is of grace.  I didn't earn it and God didn't owe it.  He just gave it.  So while I'm rejoicing in my freedom from the physical bondage of the borrelia bacteria, I don't want to forget my freedom from the death of sin.  I'm free and alive in Jesus Christ!  Glory to God!