Snowballs in June?

When I was 19 years old, I lived in my own little house.  It was tiny, but it was mine, all mine.  Unfortunately with my own place came my own responsibilities and those nasty little buggers called bills.

But one day it seemed my life was getting filled with a  slew of error messages; it felt like every little thing that could go wrong, was.  My sky light was leaking, my electric bill tripled and I couldn’t figure out why, I was fighting with my phone company, a hobo spider decided to take residence in my home (they’re about twice the size of wolf spiders here),  and my job was just giving me grief.  Overall I was miserable.  In tears I called my grandparents for guidance and that’s when they said, “It seems your life is snowballing”.  It took me a minute but I figured out what they meant; they were saying that all those little trials that I was experiencing were gathering up on me like snow would to a snowball rolling down a hill.  Those trials gathered and gathered until collectively the little issues were one overwhelming problem.  I was careening downhill just waiting until I hit a tree to  smash into a million pieces... and that’s exactly what happened.

One by one, I tackled the issues that were occurring; in the end I quit my job and lost my home but took that as an opportunity to start over.  I took all those little things that piled up and thought about what I learned from those instances.

Recently I had yet another experience with “snowballing”.  Between “fighting” with the federal loan service, changing my name and dealing with that process, figuring out what I want to do with my life and trying to find my husband and I our first home, etc., I kept reminding myself that God was in control.  I kept telling myself that this was all in God’s hands, that He hadn’t failed me before, so why would He start now?  But I would have had to start from square one if I didn’t have those previous trials.  I wouldn’t have known the mentality that I needed in order to make it through this “snowballing” session, if I hadn’t gone through it before.

Digging through Pinterest, which is a common past time of mine, I stumbled across a saying that I love.  It says, “All you need is faith and strength.  Faith that it will get better and strength to hold on until it does.”  This is in line with the verse found in James 1:2-4, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

I would not be the person I am today if I hadn’t gone through all the trials I had gone through.  The strength I now have, the confidence, the determination and dedication; many aspects of my character that were developed by those trials would not have come to pass if God hadn’t seen fit for me to be challenged by them.  Many times have I careened down a mountain side, gathering a multitude of issues and trials while in the middle fighting my way to the surface; to break it apart, make it smaller and more manageable, only to come out stronger and wiser through the grace of God.


Praise be to God for the trials we face.