O' Wounded One, I Was There to Brace Your Fall

God has an amazing way of keeping my attention, imparting wisdom, and keeping me intrigued with His word, even when I am not spending quite the time I should engrossed in it. He uses his divine touch in the seen world to keep me enamored with the unseen. Since my daughter Evelyn passed, and my walk with the Lord has deepened, the truth about how God's sovereignty/his will over what happens to us works along with the decisions we make/our "free will" has left me intrigued and somewhat confused. Some things I believe are just left to faith, and because his thoughts are not our thoughts, and his ways are not our ways, we are not always supposed to understand everything fully. How could we? We are just humans, and God is God.

I have found myself a little annoyed at women in my situation that curse God, and go on and on about how they didn't deserve for their baby to die, and there are so many bad mothers that abuse their kids, leave them in hot cars, etc. and why did "this" happen to me and not them. To me, this is their lack of understanding, or lack of wisdom to accept that God has his ways, and sometimes we won't ever understand why he allows bad things to happen to us.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9

Ok, so if God is sovereign and he knows everything that will happen to us and all the choices we are going to make, then how is it that we have free will? Because if God already knows I am going to sin, and it has already been forseen/determined that I will make that choice, then how is that free will?

God has revealed some insight to me on this subject, first using a dream. I woke up one morning from a dream in which my soul was moving along with two iron rods, one to the right and one to the left...functioning similar to reins. These rods were connected to an iron gate that was out in front of me. I was moving along in between the iron rods, and the gates would open or shut, but only by God. I was free to move back and forth between the iron rods, and I interpreted this as walking in God's will, while still exercising my free will. I was free to live between the constraints of the iron reins, but I could not venture beyond them. The opening and shutting of the iron gate ahead of me was not in my control. They would open and shut as I was moving along, but only by God's command. I believe God showed me through this dream that only he is in control of opening and closing doors in our life, and until He does so, we are to just trust him and obey him, living in the protection of his will...between the iron rods.

A few days ago, I walked out the back door to the porch to drill a couple holes in one of my Jewel Boards. I'm squatting down in front of the glass door, holding the frame on the ground, and a bird flies into the door, falls, bounces off the back of my neck, falls over my shoulder, and lands right between my feet. I look down in shock and then jump up. The bird just lays there a second and then hops up to its feet. I proceed to ask the bird if he's O.K. (I know!) and I'm thinking about where some gloves are so I can pick him up if he's injured too badly, but then he hops a little, pauses, and flies away. If I had only walked out a second later or was squatting just inches away from where I was?!...I mean, was I supposed to be there to brace his fall? This whole scene was so bizarre that I knew it was from God, so I went inside and started praying and asked God what he wanted me to know about it. I felt that God told me I was him and the bird was me in this situation. If I represented God...I did not cause the bird to crash into the door, but I was there immediately to brace his fall, in the exact place I needed to be to help him, so that his landing did not take him out completely.

Isaiah 48:9-11
“For My name’s sake I will defer My anger,
And for My praise I will restrain it from you,
So that I do not cut you off.
¹⁰ Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;
I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.
¹¹ For My own sake, for My own sake, I will do it;
For how should My name be profaned?
And I will not give My glory to another.

Maybe God doesn't cause us to get in a head-on collision in our life, but because bad things do happen in this fallen world, and he knows the things that will happen to us, He is there and not a second too late and in the exact place to brace our fall. This is true whether it is out of our control or due to our own sin. God uses these events in our life to refine us. And, even in our sin...because He "has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." (Romans 11:32). So after these tragedies or refining events in our life, he just reassures us and watches us as we get to our feet, until we eventually fly again...watching and waiting to pick us up into his arms if we need Him. Ok, so you may think this is a little deep for a bird falling on me, lol, but God also reminded me of the scripture below in realizing how He went to extreme measures to protect this bird by making sure I was there in that spot at that moment...and How much more He is their for us, but we just can't see the extreme measures He takes to protect and provide for us, in our joy and in our pain...

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? Mathew 6:25-27