Sometimes it all adds up

     In the moment of the storm or struggle it seems like nothing makes sense, and it's often hard to believe that anyone, including yourself is in control. It can feel like all the cards are stacked against you and that there's no hope, no way out. We all experience these storms and struggles, what I find amazing is how once we come through the other side of it and look back we sometimes find it all added up, it led us to this point of prosper and what seemed like endless pain, suffering, or drudgery was really just stepping stones to something greater.
     I've had this happen a few times and it always amazes me how God provides, even if we don't see it at the time. His love is always with us. I have found that even sometimes choices that afterward seemed like mistakes can lead us to where we were meant to be. For example, after high school I got accepted into a good college just about an hour or so from home in a very quaint little Pennsylvania town. I loved the school, and the area, but going would have meant leaving my friends who weren't going to college yet, and the boy I was seeing then. So I stayed and moved in with my friends, instead.
     Everyone told me it was mistake from the very start, but I didn't listen. Even when my soul cried out to me that this wasn't right, I ignored it and did what seemed like to me was a good way to start my adult life. In just a few months though I realized it was a bad choice, but I didn't feel as though I had anyway out. I was in the middle of a storm I didn't think I could escape. I could see my life spiraling out of control, but I had no idea how to get out!
     Then I met my husband, and he was my voice of reason. He asked me the questions I was too afraid to ask myself, and he helped me take back control of my life and place it back into the hands of the Father. A couple years later we discovered that we both had had plans to move to the same quaint town, but didn't, at the same time. We realized that these events that had seemed disastrous to us before we met had all led up to us meeting. We could both make mental road maps of how everything led to that, and that even if we had decided to move that we may have met there too. It was like God always intended for us to meet, and marry, we were convinced that God brought us together, and I've never doubted it.
      This is how I feel about our café too, I can see how everything has led to this point. Why certain things didn't work out, but other things happened instead. It leaves me feeling just as confident about this idea as I was about marrying Nick. I have never doubted or regretted marrying this man because I knew without a doubt this was the man I was always intended for. And this is how I feel about the café, that this is our purpose, we were meant to do this. I don't know why yet, and I don't know how, but I know that this is true. And I know that though I may not be able to see it right now, God will reveal everything when the time is right.

John 10:4
When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.