April showers and May flowers

I typed 'The End' on Angela's story 'The Pressing' earlier this month. Was it two weeks later than I'd planned? Yes. Did I feel discouraged but persevere and finish the race anyway? Also yes.

2025 didn't quite get off to the start that I'd expected, but that seems to be the new normal. There always seems to be something that slows things down - my characters won't behave, or systems and processes and technical things fail and take longer to fix than they should, or my town gets hit by a cyclone (okay that happened once, but it was a tornado the year before, which never happens here).

But this story was hard in a way that I'd never expected. Hard to look back and try to think like a naive teenager. Hard to reflect on choices and failures and forks in the road so far back that I can barely remember them. Hard to face how much of my life has been wasted complying with other people's expectations instead of God's.

I'm still working through these uncomfortable thoughts, and will probably continue working through them while I prepare for the release in June. But I started this journey out of obedience, and sometimes that's just... uncomfortable.

I was reminded by Hebrews 10:36 that 'You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised.' Our perseverance doesn't go unnoticed, and neither does our pain. But we have hope in God's many good promises.

Persevering through trials and challenges is something that we're told to rejoice in, which I don't find easy. But Romans 5:3-5 says "Not only [have we obtained access to grace through faith, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God], but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

So what we endure, the large and the small, and persevere to overcome in Christ is seen and valued by the Father, whose rewards cannot be destroyed. And that is tremendously encouraging. 

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