"We discover [our] meaning and purpose only when we make God the reference point of our lives."
This chapter brings up several thoughts for me.
First, I realize that God planned my birth, planned everything about it. He chose my parents, where we'd live, gave me a huge extended family... for these things I cannot be grateful enough. I don't have many friends, and this has bothered me a lot. However, most people do not have the blessing of family like I do, and I would glady take the family God chose for me over most "friends" I would choose for myself. When friends have disagreements, friendships end, but family is family forever.
Second, I am 25 years old and my husband will soon be 30. The subject of children is a common one with people our age, but we have yet to decide we are ready for that step. Watching our peers with their kids sometimes makes me feel guilty, especially when I watch my aunts and uncles with their grandchildren and my parents don't have babies to play with and spoil. My parents will make great grandparents :-) and I am thankful that I live close by for when that day does come. This chapter made me feel better because God plans births- we don't. When He gets ready for my husband and I to be parents and for my parents to be grandparents, then He will make it happen regardless of what we have planned.
Third, I want to share the last two stanzas of a poem in this chapter. 2010 was the hardest year of my life. Looking back hurts too much to do, but it is necessary sometimes just so I can see how blessed I am. I felt that I had been abandoned by God, that he didn't care about the pain I felt. However, I realize that - while I was feeling abandoned - God was working in the lives of those around me and using them to lift me up, to restore me and to restore my faith. My husband is the prime example. He came home from deployment with a love for me that I know came straight from Heaven.
"No, that trauma you faced was not easy.
And God wept that it hurt you so;
But it was allowed to shape your heart
So that into his likeness you'd grow.
You are who you are for a reason,
You've been formed by the Master's rod.
You are who you are, beloved,
Because there is a God!"
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