Behind the Scenes

Happy January 2009!

The year has barely begun and stretches before us all fresh and new. Can you believe that it’s already 2009? It feels not long ago that it was 2000 and I was wearing braces.

It was at about this time last year that the IDDBlog and IDD Forum team started discussing a germ of an idea: a blog for single women who are committed to courtship/dating-with-a-purpose. The blog didn’t debut until the spring, but the ideas and thoughts began in the winter.

Sometimes things take time to come to completion. All of the blog staff have other commitments that sometimes come before the blog: full-time and part-time jobs, school, ministries and just plain out boring every day stuff like laundry, house-cleaning and cooking. It wasn’t until several months after our first discussion that the blog actually debuted. It took time – expensive and sometimes hard to find stuff, that – and work, discussion and prayer.

While the comparison is very weak, just hear me out. The blog staff and I were the creators of the blog. While most of you readers weren’t aware of it, we were busy getting things ready for the blog, even before it appeared anywhere on the internet. Articles were complied and templates tweaked.

God is not just a creator, but He is the Creator. And one of the things that He is creating is the story of our lives. Sometimes parts of our stories are being created and we just don’t know it. Like the blog a year ago, God might be working and putting things into place that we don’t know about, that we won’t ever know fully until His timing is right.

There are things going on behind the scenes. Sometimes life looks boring and quiet and humdrum – as if nothing will ever change and as if God wants us where we are forever. Sometimes life is hard, painful and full of difficult decisions.

Sometimes it is difficult to see the end of it all, to see any sort of plan that God is creating. The thing is, we can’t always see things from the beginning. We can’t always tell what God is working out for us – until life has progressed a little longer, until the point when God decides to let us in on the next part of the story He is writing.

Characters in stories don’t know how it will all turn out in the end…but, we as readers, are given the special pleasure of watching the story unfold in front of our eyes. Without knowing it, we, as readers, get to see the groundwork as it’s being laid.

The thing is, as characters in this beautiful story that God is writing for each and every one of us, we don’t necessarily see the groundwork for what it is. It’s just life for some of us. Parts are hidden, other parts don’t stand out. And other parts are just plain hard.

But…they’re all there. All the puzzle pieces, each and every single one that will become clearer and clearer one day.

For some of us, it might be love stories, whether it’s about falling more and more in love with our Lord and Savior each day of our lives, or a more earthly romance with the men God wants us to marry. For others, it might be the stories of our lives, the next chapter, involving jobs, school, relationships and our walk with God.

Wherever we are, we can’t see the whole picture, we don’t know the whole story. But…we can trust the Person behind the scenes, the One guiding us as we walk out our lives, as we live out our stories. It might look messy at times, it might look hard or bleak at times…but it’s a story and the most amazing Author on earth is writing it.

Let’s live out our stories to the fullest this year. Let’s trust God the fullest this year and prepare to be amazed by how He directs us in our lives.