If you know me in real life (IRL) then you know that I have long held Jeremiah 29:11 as MY verse.  The verse of our family.  The promise that is the glue that held us all together, that continues to hold us together.  It IS my email address.  It is in my signature on my personal and work email (gotta love a faith based corporation).  It is a lovely framed print on our kitchen wall.  It is the verse that people tell me reminds them of me when they hear and the verse that strangers comment on and have thanked me for.  I live it.  I breathe it.  I KNOW THE PLANS I HAVE FOR YOU.

He doesn’t always share those plans with me when I’l like him to.  There are some plans I am still waiting on to fall in place.  And that’s ok.  The point is, I am well familiar with verse 11.  This week as I went through the Consider the Lilies study with the Take up and Read group, this verse was the focus……..along with verse 12-14.  And it took my breath away.  As if God himself basically asked me,  “Do you see?”.  Affirming the YES, He is with me.  Every step.

When I seek Him, He is there.  When I don’t, He is waiting on me.  Waiting for me to seek, knock and ask so that He can allow me to find Him, let me in and answer me.  Time and again, He is faithful.

When I put my trust in Him, He blesses me abudantly.  Restoring what has been destroyed to even better than it was that first go around.  I’ve seen this in so many facets of my life:  relationships, health, peace, guidance, wisdom and even some material comforts.  He is good beyond my wildest dreams.

This season of life has me turned a little upside down.  Our kids are getting older and I find myself in levels of anxiety that I have never experienced in their childhood.  Have we prepared them enough for life?  Have we given them a strong enough foundation?  Will they make the right choices?  The list goes on and if I give into the doubt it is a long climb out.

This weekend we attended the funeral Mass for a CRHP sister who suffered from a form of leukemia.  We were blessed as a team to have had her in our lives and especially blessed as we gathered one last time together a few weeks ago in her home to pray together and begin the Our Lady, Undoer of Knots novena.  Yesterday, Vera reminded me that our job is to live our best life and to look forward to the eternal life we have ahead.  Wrapping myself sideways about the “what-ifs” in life are non-productive and life-stealing.  God has it under control.  So, I am going to work on giving it all back to him to sort out.  Our Lady will untie those knots on my behalf and my job is to continue to Seek, knock, ask and trust that His plans for me are indeed far better than I can imagine.

Blessings!