Wendy Ripaldi's blog

The house is quiet without the kids here, strange even. God is so good! I have had so many things thrown at me in the last week but I feel good because I have prayed about it, been given my direction and have made the right choices. I am so free right right now. Free to see what God wants, free to stand by myself and free to move toward the future. It is incredible, God gave me strength to walk away from someone I did not think I could have and the best part is He put me in a position to be a person of faith in this person's life as a good friend. When I was leaving church on Saturday night I made the mistake of blowing through the stop sign coming out on the main road. As luck would have it a very nice and courteous highway patrolman was there in the median. As we chatted about what I had done and he gave me a warning he said something that stuck with me. "As much as God put you at that church tonight, God also put that stop sign there to keep you from crashing into someone else." It got me to thinking, God puts stop signs all over the place yet He often allows us to "crash" into people for His plans to unfold. Often these relationships that we become involved in evolve over time, they are not what we intially think they will be. Often you meet someone and it is different in the beginning and then it becomes something else that you never thought it would become. Sometimes these relationships are messy, painful, difficult and a struggle from the beginning. The dynamics drive you crazy and yet the person becomes endearing over time. Some of my best friends in life frustrate me and make me the angriest and likewise I make them feel the same but those difficulties forge a strong bond and enduring love. We have such a limited scope of what God is doing through these relationships and how much He intends for us to learn, love and grow through them. We cannot see the way we impact these people, showing them God's infinte love and compassion. My friend said to me last night as we watched the football game together that what he missed the most about being around me was my friendship and because of that relationship he could believe that God was really there and cared about him regardless of what was going on in his life. I was floored at this, I always viewed him until recently as someone I had had a romantic relationship with. I lost the ability to see the big picture, what God was doing. Even after all my human emotions of romantic love were gone and the difficulties of it falling apart abated, I was never able to see until then that God was still working on this person, even using me (chief of all sinners and a utter and complete failure, lol) to show my friend His love and grace. I have not felt that ashamed in such a longtime. Here I was worried about myself and how I felt and what choice I was going to make and God just had something else planned for this person that had nothing to do with what I thought or felt. I have so much to learn and so far to go, I pray that God will keep showing me how to "crash" into people, how to not avoid difficulties with others, how to keep seeking His will instead of mine, not be afraid of loving on others, to not be selfish with my time and energy and most importantly to never give up or turn my back on people because they do not fit into the neat little package of my expectations. I enjoy having peace and quiet, but I miss my boys. Wednesday just cannot get here fast enough, I just want to gather them up and wrap my arms around them. Hopefully their travels will be smooth instead of the hours of delays we experienced yesterday at the airport.