Next week I will be sixty eight years old.  Life has truly been gracious to me even with the struggles that have been salted into it.

Lately, I have sensed a change of direction coming.  Doors are slowly closing.  My wife and I are set to anticipate the opening of new doors.  The sensation of what may be ahead are usually set with anxiety, but this time, I feel it will be different.  It’s as if it’s the coming into my own right.  All the years behind me have brought me to this day.

My wife and I thought we’d found the church to end all churches for the remaining portion of our walk on this earth, but we have been profoundly shaken over events that have occurred in the church.  None of it involves us as an intricate part of the event.

The contrast of where I came from in life and where my wife came from is broad.  She spent years in and out of church, but in the last four or so years she has grown by leaps and bounds having read the Bible through once and is nearing her second read through.  She has been solidly saved and filled with the Spirit.  I am blessed to know her and have her as a deep part of my life.

I spent 30 some odd years heavily involved in church.  I did grow up in a Baptist church so you could tack on a few more luke warm years.  But those thirty years were very formative.  I saw a lot as a leader.  I’ve seen the good, the bad and the downright ugly.  I could say I am included with the ugly at the end of it all.

It has taken me several years to allow myself time to come to a new realization of who I am.  People from my past would not know me now.  I walk more solidly and understand situations and hopefully can articulate how I feel more clearly.

I do have a fault of going into too much detail and my wife will readily say “Do you have to say so much about that”?  Then I have to pare it down to the base form of the statement I am trying to convey.

I will make this post short.  To say what I feel is this.  I feel a paradigm shift in the making.  A totally new way and direction is at hand.  Where this will take us is not fully known at this moment.  I just know that my heart is open to God so that He can direct us where He wants us.

I’d like to add one thing in closing this out.  I could be mistaken for talking about myself too much, but my biggest hope is that someone else can see themselves in it and identify with it.  It’s my hope that what I say will help someone else.  Never give up in the midst of circumstance.  Take it as a challenge to overcome.  Be prayerful in it and God will draw you and Himself closer together.