I remember as a little girl loving to hear stories that ended with “and they lived happily ever after.” The fact that the phrase “and they lived happily ever after” was at the end of a book known as a fairy tale should have alerted me not to expect my real everyday life to have the “happily ever after” banner flying high above my kingdom, but I was oblivious. I spent a lot of time trying to arrange life so I could live the fairy tale. My attempt to have the fairy tale marriage and mother fairy tale children and live in a fairy tale world was exhausting. Every time I thought I was at the perfect spot for a “happily ever after,” the Lord whispered in my ear, “and then.”
When our kids were little and we headed out on a road trip there were no DVD players, hand held video games, or ipods to entertain them. Back in the day, we actually played the alphabet game watching for signs with each letter. We tried to find all 50 states on license plates, and we would almost always enjoy a good game of “and then.” One person would start a story. It could be anything from a fairy princess to monsters in a lagoon – it didn’t matter. The point was to tell a couple of sentences and say “and then” and pass it on to the next person. The fairy princess story initiated by our daughter suddenly found itself tossed into the lap of a brother who turned the beautiful princess into a fire breathing dragon and then passed the story to dad who plunged the dragon into a deep dark sea where his fire power no longer worked and on to me who would arrange a meeting with a kindly mermaid who would take the dragon into her care and then back to the brother and on it went. Well that is pretty much the way my life with the Lord has been - a series of “and then” moments. Beautiful moments have turned into scary and treacherous times followed by unexpected twists and turns and then moments of pure joy. Our lives are always moving and we are always being changed – hopefully for the better. Our “and then” moments in life are meant to be “glory to glory” moments in the Lord. They are the circumstances that God uses to force us to grow in faith, force us to put down roots of love that go deep, to spread our branches and bear fruit and release the sweet fragrance of the Lord into our world.
This week I said goodbye to my brother, Jim, who was ushered into the presence of Almighty God and heard … "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!" I know that he is living the happily ever after life right now.
As his sister I heard, “and then.” God is not finished telling His story through me yet. I am still being changed from glory to glory. So even though this was a very difficult week, this is not where my story ends. One day I will live in God’s kingdom under His banner of love that will read “and Judy lived happily ever after,” but for today I am following close to the Lord to see where we go from here. This is not the end only another “and then” moment in my life.
2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
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