Grateful For Faith and Beauty in Disorder

The beauty of a wildflower is manifested through the untidy and somewhat clustered look of its habitat.

— JMeyer —

 

The above photo was captured at Huffman Prairie–the practice field for the Wright Brothers.

Lori, Jordan, and I made a visit to the prairie about a month after my dad’s passing. It brightened our day. Catching the bee getting his daily dose of pollen and nectar was an added bonus.


The opening quote came to me as I was reflecting on the last five months of my life.

You may have noticed that my blogs have a bit more depth to them these days–I’m guessing it is therapeutic for me and I hope it is for you also.


Faith doesn’t just happen. It’s like a muscle that needs resistance in order to grow.

Our family has met resistance over the past several months and although we may sometimes question why it’s all happening at one time–our faith has remained intact and is ever-growing.

It would be easy to blame all of our misfortune on the devil but I don’t like giving the devil any more credit than he deserves:

  • The devil didn’t cause my bike to crash and he certainly didn’t break my hip. I made a very poor decision to ride in wet weather and I crashed because of my sub-par decision.
  • The devil didn’t make my dad die of lung cancer. He was ninety years old and was nearing the end of his life on earth. A couple of days before he died he jokingly said to a nurse, “Just don’t smoke.” My dad smoked like a chimney from age 18 to 52 and always knew he was playing with fire–literally. Thank God he quit smoking when he was 52 because he most likely added several years to his life.
  • The devil didn’t decide I needed to deal with a Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) back in August. The DVT came as a result of my fractured hip which came from a poor decision as I noted above.
  • The devil didn’t damage the AC joint of my shoulder of which I’m having repaired next Monday. My shoulder impairment is the result of many years of use and abuse as an athlete.

Sometimes tragic things happen in our lives which are totally out of our control and not the result of an attack from the devil or a poor decision:

  • The devil didn’t decide that my father-in-law needed to battle a rare neuromuscular problem–Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP)–for 34 years. His CIDP was most likely caused by a virus. After years of boldly fighting it, making one comeback after another, he finally succumbed to this horrible disease and joined my dad in eternal health, peace, and tranquility on November the 8th.

With all of this being said, I WILL give the devil credit for evil acts committed by human beings. Acts like mass shootings, terrorism, murder, domestic abuse, etc…

We live very close to Dayton, Ohio, and evil has reared its ugly head more than once in the past few months in our dear city of Dayton.


My point…?

We have an awesome God!


For the most part—life happens.

It’s ALWAYS gonna happen.

No one ever said that life would be fair.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it several dozen times in my blog over the years–what we do with the challenges that life presents will make all the difference.


As I noted earlier, I will not give full credit to the devil when bad stuff is happening but I will give the devil credit for trying to inhabit our minds when all hell is breaking loose around us.

The devil’s favorite tool is fear and fear is False Evidence Appearing Real.

When life gets difficult the devil tries his best to get us to buy into his “false evidence.” He wants us to be driven by fear instead of faith in God.

If he can get us to question God/Jesus and the beauty of eternal life–he begins to win. Furthermore, if we turn our backs on God in trying times–the devil does indeed win. I turned my back on God many years ago when I was battling addiction and it is a very lonely and pitiful place.


Throughout this challenging stretch in our life, Lori and I have continued to pray for Him to give us the strength to make it through another day. God doesn’t remove our challenges but he always equips us with the strength to handle them if we ask.

I can’t speak for Lori, but my unwavering faith has grown my faith muscle stronger than ever before.


In essence, we are all wildflowers living in a “prairie” that sometimes seems messy, chaotic, and disordered. But when we choose to face the chaos with faith, God has a way of aligning and ordering things so that His radiant beauty always prevails…I write from experience.

2 Timothy 1:7, “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” 

P.E.A.C.E.

Jay@EagleLaunch.com

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