Joy in the midst of "Rain"

It has been raining here for a week on and off.  I love the sunshine, and especially  as a mom of 3young kids the rain gets to you. I am longing for the sunshine to come out so that I can enjoy outdoor activities with the kids.  But I have to say that these rainy days are like our lives sometimes.  We go through periods of our lives where it feels like all it does is rain and that the sun is no where in sight.  But I believe just like the rain is necessary to help the plants grow so is the "rain" in our lives.  Sometimes the "rain" is the very thing that will make us grow.  And it is through this growing that we find true joy.  KLOVE is doing a contest this week about when your faith became real.  And as I thought about the one time in my life where my faith became alive, I knew that exact moment.  I can't tell you the exact day, but that moment of time is cemented in my head.  It was sometime in early July of 1996.  I was working at Word of Life Inn, in upstate NY.  This was my 3rd summer working up there.  My sister stopped in and said she needed to talk with my brother and I. She sat us down and told me that my dad had a brain tumor.  That was the moment that my faith became real, and the beginning of the rain storm!  I was already accepted to go to Bible school the following september.  I wanted to stay home so badly so that I could be with my daddy, but he made me go to school, because he believed that is where I needed to be.  I will never forget the time where he set all 5 of us down and told us to NEVER blame God.  That is an amazing amount of faith!  He told us that he didn't understand why God was doing this, but that it was a part of God's plan and that He would be glorified!  The "rain" continued until a year later God took my daddy up to heaven.  But to the end he had an impact on the people around him! It took a while for the rain clouds to go away, and I still have days of "rain" but I know that God's plan was to make us stronger through it!  The verse that God gave me and is still my favorite verse today is:  James 1:2-4.
  "Count it all joy my bretheren when you encounter trials of many kinds, knowing that the testing of your faith develops perserverance.  But let perservance have it's perfect work so that you may be perfect and complete lacking nothing."  Now that is a powerful verse and the basis of why we need to have joy in the midst of rain.  It clearly says in that verse that through those trials if we persevere that we will be complete lacking nothing.  I know that trial helped me get closer to God, and that every trial I have faced since then has developed more perservance in me and that it will help me to get stronger and not lack anything.  So that is what I challenge you with tonight.  No matter if you are in the middle of a little sprinkle or a crazy thunderstorm.  Know that having joy in it, and enduring it is going to make you stronger in the end.  Hold on to God and let Him help you through it, He is the only one that you should cling to!

I didn't get a chance to go out walking today, but I was planning on taking a day off.  Kept to what I needed to calorie wise, loving this new program on my phone.  I am praying that the rain will hold off in the morning tomorrow, but if it doesn't I'll be walking anyway, I really look forward to this time of spiritual and physical exercise.  If you are trying to eat healthy and exercise too, hang in there, it may not be easy but it's worth it.  Don't forget to get your spiritual exercise today too!!