This morning as I was driving, I was overcome by the beauty of this place I now call home.  The blue sky.  The gorgeous majestic mountains, covered with brilliantly white snow.  I literally broke down in thankfulness that God has brought us here to Colorado.  My tears surprised me.  But then again, they made perfect sense.

The seven years before we came here last year, were literally seven years in the desert for me.  No disrespect to the great state of Arizona, but I felt like I was dying a slow death there.  My family had a great experience there and for that I am grateful.  Two of my grown children still live there and are doing very well.  I have many friends there who would never leave because they love it there.  For many, many people it is a paradise.  For me, it was….well…..not.

I most often felt like a square peg in a round hole, not quite fitting in with the culture there.   Everything that I did there, I would immerse myself in to become part of the community.   It wasn’t that I didn’t feel loved or accepted, it was more like I felt like a visitor.  You know how you go to a beautiful place on vacation and the sites are wonderful and you experience many things, but at the end of the trip you are so glad to come home where you feel like it’s YOUR place?  That’s kind of what it was like.  Never really felt like it was where I belonged or where I could plant firm roots.  And I longed to feel at home in a place that couldn’t offer that to me.

And there were painful things that happened there.  Things that rocked my world and took me to a place emotionally that I had never been.  Dark, scary, excruciating times.  Times that took me to my “cussing closet” to cry and scream and pray on my face, begging God to rescue me.

And still, He kept me there.  He kept me in that place where I felt like a stranger.  A place where pain and tears marked the majority of my days.  A place where the passions that I felt and the things that I wanted to do had nowhere to go.  A place where, for the first time in my life, my heart felt homeless.

But while He kept me there, He was there, too.  Comforting me, teaching me, drawing me closer and closer to HImself.  He showed me things in my heart that needed changing.  He forgave me for attitudes and choices that I had made in that pain.  And in those dark and sad and scary times, He held me.  And often He would whisper in my ear, “It will be alright.  I am right here and I have a plan.”  And I would struggle to believe that that was, indeed true.

I may never know all the reasons that He took me to and kept me in that place for seven years.  I do know that my daughter found her wonderful husband there.  I do know that I made some lifetime friends there.  I do know that God, in that humble, on-my-face time, changed me, and deepened my love for and intimacy with Him.  I do know that because of that experience, I will never be the same.  And I know, without a doubt, that such a time was preparation for what He has for me to do now.

On the drive this morning, I noticed little bits of green grass springing up from the dead, brown ground of winter.  The first glimpses of spring and new life.   And through my thankful tears, I smiled.  God has truly led me out of the desert and brought me into a land of “milk and honey”.  I am home.   That season of “winter” is over and new life is springing up out of it.  What had felt like dead ground actually served as preparation for the fertile soil that I am now planted in.  The green shoots of baby grass are popping up from what used to be brown.  And though I would not choose to go back to that desert place, I know that who I am today and the passions that God has stirred in my heart come from the difficulties that drew me closer to Him.  Hopefully, that result will bless the lives of others.

And yes.  This morning’s tears made all the sense in the world…

John 12:24 – “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”