A change in seasons

I need to post something amusing today, so here is an ad I came across the other day when reading a magazine on my tablet.

I am glad that things have been going better for me lately in the realms of how I approach things...for the kids' school and for my house and my for my creativity.  Of course, the latter is still a bit early to tell the complete effectiveness, especially right now, but I'm seeing a more golden light.  A peace that replaces the frustration I was feeling before.  God has been preparing me for what this year is bringing me.  Kind of strange preparations for the circumstances, but ones that will no doubt help to bolster me up.

Every season of our lives brings unique challenges, and ways to grow.  Unfortunately, some of those ways really really really suck to get through (really)...but I know those times can be the best circumstances ever for us, personally--difficult and agonizing and hard (even impossible) to understand as they might be.

I am so grateful for what God has brought me to in the different seasons of my life, including the current and upcoming ones.  I am intensely grateful for my sorrow, as well, because there have been many circumstances in which it seemed even that could be stripped from me.  I'm so grateful that I am being restored, even though I have to go through so much struggle.

I love to read the devotionals of Oswald Chambers; his wisdom always astounds me.  Yesterday, this scripture from Romans 6 was the focus:

⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. ⁶ For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— ⁷ because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
⁸ Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. ¹⁰ The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
¹¹ In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

And here in part is what Oswald Chambers had to say:

"The idea all through the apostle Paul's writings is that after the decision to be identified with Jesus in His death has been made, the resurrection of Jesus penetrates every bit of my human nature."

Every last bit. My entire heart, my loneliness, my agony, my struggles; he changes my hard heart that is continuously assaulted and that continuously gives in to hardening--he changes it to his soft heart which is able to feel and to rejoice and to understand, even in the worst circumstances of our lives.

"He takes charge of everything....I find the life of Jesus in me all the time." 

I often find myself concerned with what is in my heart, amongst other things wondering how to soften my heart.  I can't really do it.  But in realizing that those things are crucified with Jesus, I find that they don't matter; they only have the power that I previously gave to them...they can be cast aside because they are not a part of the life I live to God.  And then, I find myself free.