What If You Knew?

I love books.
I love stories.
And in my younger days, I would often read the last few pages of the book before I would get too engrossed in the story.
I just had to know the ending.

What if you knew how your story was going to end?

Would you do it differently?
How would your story look?

This is something I pondered in the early morning hours of yesterday.
As I struggled once again for peace, I began blaming myself once again as if all of my woes are within my control and therefore should have been avoided. Sometimes this is true.
But sometimes...

Life just happens.

It stops us in our tracks.
We get blindsided.
Our plans get pushed to the back burner.
We are faced with decisions, long term and present moment, that we never imagined we would.

And those of us who claim to be people of faith think we know what we would do,
Or at least what we hope we would do,
When faced with insurmountable odds.

Three and a half years ago my family came within 2 1/2 days of losing our house to foreclosure.  A month of phone calls, paperwork, prayers, tears, and heartache boiled down to an e-mail at 4:30 Friday evening cancelling the sale scheduled for 9am Monday morning.  At that time, that was one of the toughest challenges I had ever faced.  It was the longest, scariest, sickest month of my life.

That was a cakewalk compared to what I would face 6 months later.

But, my question to you is:  what if you knew the ending as the story begins?

What if I knew that my house would not be sold from the very beginning?
Would I have prayed, and trusted, and wept on my knees anyway?
There is no easy answer to this question.
On the one hand, no, because the peace I would have had going in would have told me there was no need to worry.
God has already told me not to worry.
About anything.
But, my peace would not have come from my leaning in on God.  It would have come from the knowledge of the ending.
On the other hand, had I known that I would lose my house, would I have prayed and sought God's hand as I did?  Knowing my requests would not be answered?
It's a difficult scenario.

Place yourself in this scene:
You've just been told you have cancer.

And you know how this is going to end.

I'd like to think I would be strong, courageous, filled with grace, a woman of Faith.
I would like to think I would inspire others and encourage them in their journeys.
But, I have no idea.   I've not walked that path.

I ponder such things as I hear of a woman who has walked the cancer road with the strength of a warrior and the Faith of our Savior.  And she has received the worst news.  There's nothing more the doctors can do.

And I asked myself: I wonder if she would have walked this path differently, knowing the ending to her story.

My guess is: probably not.

Would I have begged God's provision for my house knowing beforehand He would rescue?
Would I have fought tooth and nail for my marriage for a year knowing the end had already come?

Look at your challenges.
Look at your struggles.

Remember, we really do know the end of our story.
No, not our earthly story.
And that is the scary part.

God is not a genie in a bottle.
If we pray hard enough, trust Him enough, talk about Faith enough...
That does not lead to our wishes being granted.

But, our journeys to Him strengthen us, strengthen each other, prepare us for the True Life still to come.
And when that time comes, I want to be able to taste ALL that it has to offer with my Love.

We don't offer prayers as if they are wishes to be granted by sorcery.
We aren't given three wishes in life.

We are offered relationship.
And opportunities to know the Author of our story; the Author of our Life.

If given the chance, I would not skip to the end; read the last page of my book.
I want to savor every word along the way, feel the crisp pages between my fingers as I long to flip to the next one eager to see what comes next.

I will soak in each moment, each detail, each character and plot line.
And feel the joy  and satisfaction as my story comes to its earthly conclusion.

Because in that moment, I will know...

That was only the beginning...