A Call to Action

It’s been almost a year now that I broke up with a man that I had dated for nearly 4 years. The person that I was so sure God brought into my life. It’s been a year of grieving.  It’s also the year that I turned 50. Yes, the big five-O!  Over this past year I have gained about 10 lbs. and felt old and frumpy. I have used food and drink to fill up not only my empty places left from the rejection of a man, and the loneliness from lack of companionship, but also to fill up the celebratory moments and days of fun that I used to share with a companion.

Turning 50 also hit me hard -- unlike any other age.  I’m grieving that I’ve come this far in life and should be a seasoned, mature adult, starting to mentor those younger than me and “have it all together”, yet I still feel like a young single mom (who still lives in a house without a garage), when other’s my age are starting to have fun with their spouses again now that the children are leaving the nest, looking expectantly at their years of retirement, furthering their education, doing more volunteer work etc.

But as I was reading in Lysa Terkeurst’s “Unglued” this morning, I have learned that I have labeled myself “Old and Unwanted”. (There are no “WANTED” posters in my hope chest!) I have lost my hope and have rejected that Jeremiah 29:11 was meant for my life also.  “For I know the plans that I have for you”, declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

As Lysa points out, I can choose to view my circumstances as a call to action.  I am God’s workmanship and his Word says that he is faithful to complete the work he has started.  He is chiseling me and releasing me from my hard and defeated places and I can choose or not choose to work with him in that.

In Ephesians it says that we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. So as Lysa says, He knows best how to prepare in us the character we need to fulfill our calling. (I just wish He’d get it over with! LOL!)

So today I am declaring that I choose to take action.  (Actually for me it was a couple of days ago), but I am choosing to watch my diet more closely, to be more conscious of my empty places, and to turn to Jesus to fill them.  To turn to Him immediately, not as a last resort, but to actively seek Him when I’m feeling empty.  I don’t want to live in defeat. In Ecclesiastes 3:4 it says that there is a time to mourn and a time to dance.

Today I choose to take action!  To declare that my season of mourning is over!  Today I choose, with total dependence on the one who created me, to take positive action and dance my way to the finish line, rather than mentally beating myself up, and I ask my sisters in Christ to hold me accountable.

Joy comes in the morning and “this is the day that the Lord hath made, and I will rejoice and be glad in it”!

Kathy Skalabrin