From life to death and back again

Ever have that feeling that when it rains, it pours?? How about when it is pouring, there has to be lightning and thunder and wind gushes? That's where I am now - in a torrential downpour. The year 2014 has not been favorable towards me. Everything that could go wrong, seems to have gone wrong. In the last six months, I feel I have been stretched and tugged, tossed and turned.

My friends and I decided we wanted to start a Beth Moore study - Believing God. I thought it would be awesome to take a look at my faith and challenge it. To actually believe God! How little I knew!!
Before the study could get started, I was already being put to the test. There was a terrible incident in my family and I already had to examine if I really believed God to make it better. As things in my life went from bad to worse, I realized I actually NEEDED to start that study. Something about wanting to know what I needed to do to believe God more propelled me on.

In the middle of the study, more bad news arrived... and later still more. As I sat and thought about how the devil was using my family as a playground, how my faith and belief in God was being pushed to the absolute limits, I couldn't help but cry. The bible says that God will never give us more than we can bear. It also says that He knows exactly what we need. I am wondering just how much I can bear.

I am waiting for the moment I collapse but for some reason, God has given me this undeniable strength to keep standing. I feel like everything is collapsing around me, everything that could go wrong is going wrong, yet, I'm believing God to do the impossible!!

I want to .... I don't know. I want to cry, I want to ask God why yet, all I can do is sing praises to God. I sometimes get the thought that maybe God has forsaken me, maybe even just sitting there watching, but in those times, I think of what could have been. What should have been and I can't believe that God forgot or is a bystander in my life. I remember that God is so very intimately involved in my life, He is my biggest fan, my biggest supporter for me to succeed. With a coach and cheerleader like Him, how can I fail?

So in December 2013, I was in a place of life and I felt that January 2014 brought death. I watched dreams and plans I had, that I believed God was blessing, die. I watched challenges and circumstances arise and I felt I was in the valley of death. But just like Ezekial saw in that valley of dry bones, that valley of undeniable death, "they stood on their feet and exceedingly great army". There was life to be found! In the midst of the worse time, (I mean what could be worse than death??), God showed Ezekial that it wasn't over. That even in the midst of death, life can happen.

So, I feel as this is my journey. from life to death and back again (to life). Even without the study (that I have yet to get into the full swing of), I realize I am believing God. Could my faith be deeper, stronger, bolder? Of course! Always. But I have faith. I do believe that God is in control, that He is working things out for my good, for His glory. So as I stand in the valley of death, I live. I choose to live. I choose to speak life over me and every situation surrounding me.