Lessons Learned - a Retrospective

In my work, we have "sprints" and at the end of the sprint, you meet and have a "retrospective" to discuss what we've learned.  This is a lessons-learned of sorts - a retrospective of the "beauty" of our last 3 years.  I can see the beauty and how it prepares us for the road ahead.

August of 2011, the people my wife and I were is so very, very different than from who we are today.  Praise God!  But it came at great cost.  We were naive, excited, and filled with home and expectation.  Had you told us then what would unfold over the next 2 years, we would have turned and gone the other way.

Your word is a lamp to my feet    and a light to my path. (Psalm 119:105 ESV)

God planted the seed of living out "this day" and begin to slow down.  July of that year, He was speaking to us about how to relax into life as it unfolds at the same time, breaking our hearts with what breaks His.  And as we collectively do this - corporately - that's the church.

Second, he uses those situations in which you are challenged by need so great that you know you are powerless to resolve it yourself. Don't despise those moments or blame God for them. He doesn't create them. They simply result from a world out of synch with his desires that fall alike on the just and unjust. He will, however, use everything in your life, including your difficulties, to teach you how to trust Him more freely.

That's how Paul measured his troubles: "We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even unto death...But this happened taht we might not rely on ourselves but on God...He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us." (2 Cor 1:8,9)

Taken from The Naked Church by Wayne Jacobsen pp.112-113

Momentary light afflictions.  The overcoming life.