THORNS AND ROSES

I know it’s been a very long time since you’ve heard from me, but I have a good excuse -as always. I’ve been busy. Every time I sat down and tried to write out a post I got caught up in something else; but now that I’m back again I don’t have much time to write this blog post anyway, so I’ll make it short. Not too short though.

So after moving out of our bus the first week of the new year we started off on our icy trek through the wilds of Antarctica, discovering Mount Everest along the way. (We took a strange route to Antarctica.) Alright, so maybe I exaggerated the cold weather we ran into just a bit, but it was quite icy in the places we toured at the beginning of the year.

Where was I? Oh yes: we set off on our little escapade via van and trailer and hit the road ready for the normalcy of a southern gospel group’s life, (normal…right), but about halfway through our sojourn we got a little discouraged, (see previous posts), and now we have reached the end of our three-month journey and are so glad to finally be home. I will post pictures as soon as we have everything cleaned up and moved in…if I can find the time that is. Don’t hold your breath on that one though; I seem to remember promising pictures of Jared’s graduation, but I’m still working on that one.

Alright, so now that we’re back home it’s been a constant struggle for cleanliness and order. Order is a hard thing to attain when you have this equation, by the way:

9 people + all personal belongings of said people + moving all belongings of afore mentioned people into 45 foot bus + moving all belongings belonging to all of the 9 people into the 45 foot bus within three days time

Then you add to the equation all the cleaning, sorting and clearing out that goes with that and you have an organized mess. If you don’t know what an organized mess is, it’s when you have a big pile of stuff that everyone else calls junk and can’t find anything in, but you know exactly where each item is located. I know this because that’s what my bunk usually is. Anyway, that should pretty much explain my recent lack of posts.

As I said, I don’t have much time for a long post, but before I go, I do want to leave you with a thought. Abraham Lincoln -one of my favorite presidents- once said:

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”

Over the past three months there have been plenty of times when whining and complaining may have seemed justified from my point of view, and I am ashamed to admit that at times I have given into temptation for the luxury of a complaint along the way; but really, there’s been no call for it. There are people in other countries, imprisoned, sick, dying every day, and yet when the road gets a little rough for us and our every whim isn’t catered to, we believe ourselves to be possessive of a right to grumble and whine about our atrocious lot in life when, in actuality, we’re living in a country, in a life, that others can’t even imagine. We have no idea how good we’ve got it here.

Life on the road can be hard at times, especially in the past few months. But I wouldn’t change any of it. I believe God has used recent circumstances to teach me some very important lessons. Lesson number one would probably be contentment. A verse that’s helped me along the way is found in Philippians chapter 4. In verse 11 Paul says:

Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, [therewith] to be content.

Contentment would be the first lesson. Flexibility would probably be the second. It’s taken a great deal of adjustment getting used to staying in a different house or hotel almost every night. The third would be that He gave me a greater appreciation for my dad and my brothers who sacrifice their time, energy, and oftentimes their sleep, in order to keep this ministry going. Josh and Jared get up early every Sunday morning to load in equipment and set things up in the churches while the rest of us are in the bus, usually still sleeping. Dad drives late into the night -sometimes all night- in order to get us where we need to go. I never really understood how much they sacrifice until our recent experiences without the bus. And it’s so true that in every successful venture there are a lot of people behind the scenes that keep things working, and these behind-the-scenes people hardly ever get any credit for their hard work. I’ve learned a lot more than this, but in a nutshell this is what I’ve been learning lately.

And all the wonderful people God has given us to be our prayer warriors and encouragers along the way are what has kept us going through the tough times in the ministry. When things get hard, I try to find the good things; the things I can be thankful for around me. Whether they’re small things or big things, if you look around -no matter what you may be facing- you can always find something to thank God for in your life.

To wrap things up, let me leave you with this thought: They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So we can choose to see the bad and the ugly in our situation and circumstances and complain because of the thorns on our rose bush; or we can choose to see the beauty and the good God has given us in the midst of our trials and rejoice because our thorn bush has roses. Today, I encourage you to look past the thorns and find the roses in life; and when you find them, go and share them with someone else who could use a little bit of encouragement along the way.

-Abby