The Rising River

**At the Forever conference last week, I was given a beautiful journal to wrote 'my story' in so this is the first entry in my journal after all of the conference notes #rrcforeverconf15 :

Normally a stream...

Yesterday morning on my way to church, I watched all along the river; the water rising. A week's worth of rain and a Winter's worth of snow melt has brought the level up to raging from a slow and steady flow. It is a part of Spring living along the South Platte River. South of our house, the South Platte and the North Fork of the South Platte converge together. As I pass the confluence, I see a group of Search and Rescue folks fully geared up practicing rescues in the rising water. 

Suddenly, it hit me; there is a correlation between what I am witnessing and how God works in our lives. Sometimes, we need flood waters to rise so WE can learn how to save a life! Those Search and Rescue people cannot just jump into a raging river and hope to save someone from being swept away. They must learn how to do it through classroom teaching and then simulations. However, the BEST way to practice is by putting their skills to the test in real life scenarios; the kind that can only be tested when the waters are fully raging! So it is as well with God. Sometimes we have to go through things in this life that are just plain scary! Yet, it is in those really rough waters of life where we learn to lean on Him and build up our skills so that in the future, we might save a life. Just like a Search and Rescue team, we never know when our learning will be put to the test so we must practice to prepare but without real-life situations, we might not know what needs to be done.

Thank you God for the 'rising rivers' in life that prepare me to be a 'warrior chick' for your army to build your eternal kingdom!