Today is mine and my husband’s 20 year wedding anniversary! I have been thinking today about how we started, and where God has brought us. Always candid about how Ben and I have, “made it this far”. I think about what plans have gone by the wayside and what plans God has brought to replace those. Plans that we could have never, I mean never, in a million years conjured up in our minds, a plan like moving to Zambia to minister to vulnerable women and men there. I like this saying about marriage that says-marriage is so we can do ministry better together than we ever could have alone. That does not happen overnight though!

There have been many dark places that we have walked but God brought us out into the light through His never ending love. His desire to not leave us how He found us but make us more like Him is amazing. See, He loves us too much to let us stay stagnate.  The time when God led both of us to His surgery table was one of the darkest moments for us. It was such a tough time but we knew God was removing, cutting out and sewing up all the cancerous, tumorous and open wounds that needed His touch. We stayed there and allowed God to finish surgery and lay still while He healed us. 

Whether you like the analogy of a surgeon, or a carpenter with a hammer and chisel chipping away all the excess that is not needed in order to reveal the true masterpiece, I beg of you this-Give Him permission to either grasp His loving scalpel or hold His hammer and chisel so He can began that wonderful process. Bruce Wilkinson has a great quote that goes something like this, “The bigger the vision God gives you, the bigger the cleansing that you will go through to be prepared for it.” I am giving Him permission to get out that scalpel again and continue the process of making me all He wants me to be for His glory and His honor.  

Philippians 1:6-“being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Ben and I in Zambia together for the first time in 2012!