"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!" That is a phrase I have heard all my life, but I never followed those directions. I was always in the belief that I was able to handle anything, no matter how much heat...until the last couple of years. From cancer to difficult situations at work...death of parents to beginning to watch my children stretch their wings and fly. Stress began to gradually build and build and build until I thought I would either explode or implode, but God had a different plan.
As I have looked over the last 10 years of my life I have seen where God was trying me by fire. He placed me in the situation of watching over my aging parents; through major health problems with tricky living arrangements, very young children, and living month to month, pay check to pay check, barely. He then readjusted life and I quickly found myself, burying my mother, parenting my father and children, and trying to work a full-time job as a special education teacher. Talk about trial by fire... I was trying to balance children in pre-school and daycare, elementary children with homework and outside activities, a full-time job teaching special education students and being Department Head, monitoring my dad's living arrangements and medicals appointments, teaching music with 1st and 2nd graders at church, singing in the choir and playing handbells.
Life continued in this fast pace of life for a few more baking years, until one summer day, God readjusted life again and I found myself standing over my father-in-law's grave and then a year later, over my own father's grave. At long last, I thought life would finally settle down and I would be able to breathe that cool refreshing air that our kitchens fill up with after the oven has been turned off and the heat of the stove has dissipated.
Then was once again, God readjusted the heat in the kitchen and I found myself fighting for my life with cancer. But God is gracious under fire; He provided Jesus to be in the massive fire with Shadraq, Meshack, and Abendigo when they needed Him. God provided me, with just the right diet to give me the health to fight the cancer. Four months before I was diagnosed, I found out I was allergic to rice, corn and glutens. The diet put me in the perfect health and weight to fight the cancer. What an amazing God we serve!
Life finally settled down for about half a year, then I felt like every burner on the stove had been turned up to high and the oven was sitting on 5000 degrees F. Jonathan went off to college, Mark was diagnosed with Parkinson's, three extreme behavior students moved into my case load, I quit my job due to extreme stress that no one should have to deal with without any help, and my mother-in-law was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Somehow in the midst of this overwhelming heat, God has supplied me with the most incredibly made hot pads to help me handle each of these problems. He has given me days of cooling peace, an euphoric feeling that everything is going to be all right, and patience to wait upon Him to help me pull all of this out of the oven and see what He has created as a blessing.
We don't always understand why we have to go through the test of fire until we come out on the other side a stronger person in Christ and to the Glory of God. As I await this delectable creation that God is putting together through the test of fire, I will be sitting in the kitchen, with baited breath, waiting.
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