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Diamonds aren't softly and lovingly teased out of lumps of carbon. The process is nothing short of aggressive. Gold isn't cooed and coddled into the gleaming precious metal it becomes. Refinement involves intense heat to cleanse the metal of impurities and reveal the value. Human nature looks for the easy way out of difficult situations and circumstances but taking the path of least resistance is never God's preference for His children. Although sometimes God seems hard to understand (He is!) and a million miles away, He is always present. Always faithful. Always loving. Always trustworthy. God is good. All the time.

Sometimes He chooses to deliver us from danger or the consequences of our many misguided or selfish choices but more often He longs to lead us through troubles and walk alongside us in our journey through this life. He has much to teach us about His character and our place in His creation, and the best lessons are the ones learned through hardship and challenge.

Finding the deepest broken place inside among many broken places took time, but God showed me the inability to trust encompassed the most damaged parts of my heart, mind and soul. So, in order to get the healing process underway and teach me that life is so much more than my skewed perceptions were making it, God allowed me (and my husband) to experience a season of intense drama, upheaval and instability. I should have learned these valuable lessons in my youth but years of trauma had placed a pall and pattern of victimhood over my life and effectively blocked my ability to perceive situations with a clear eye. I am the poster girl for arrested development, but the Bible is full of examples of God's wish for maturity in believers. It's only when we reach a level of physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual maturity that we are able to reap the benefits of God's work in our lives and be more useful to others.

Two years ago our home was severely damaged by ill-trained, unsupervised and incompetent workers hired to put a French drain in our basement. They undercut the footing around the foundation and basically broke a wall. During the three months it took to settle with the insurance company, get the job done, and find the resources to pay for a lawyer and the money to make up the difference between the cost and the settlement, we had to move out of our home. Two new rescue dogs had arrived recently and required adjustment they were forced to adjust all right! First to one neighbor's

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