Is This the End?

Read my blog slogan slowly and think about it for a minute. What does it mean to you?

I first heard this phrase at a writer's conference a few years ago. It was like being hit by a lightning bolt. A successful author was speaking to a roomful of writers, talking about the different paths our lives can take when we are open to God's leading.

I was still in a dazed shock from a combination of my daughter's betrayal and having landed my first literary agent only a month earlier. My settled life of the past 20 years was suddenly veering in a new direction and I had that deer-in-the-headlights feeling.

My daughter's betrayal of everything I'd spent my adult life trying to instill in her had left me devastated. Had my life been some cosmic joke? Had I missed God all along? Was I a failure?

Those words pierced my heart like a spear. God was speaking to me. My life had come to a screeching dead end as I questioned everything I thought I believed, everything I'd committed my life to. Was it all for nothing? My first child out of the chute had made a mockery of everything I stood for. I had three more kids. Should I give up? Let them raise themselves? Forget trying to do something for God?

Was this the end?

It would have been had I failed to make the turn. That night I sat frozen through the rest of the talk, hearing only God's whisper inside my head. "Keep going. Don't stop. It's not the end. Only the beginning."

He was right. I had no idea the fulfilling life had had waiting for me just ahead.

Since then I watch for those bends and approach them with more confidence. There are no Dead End signs when you walk with God.

Only turns.

Be sure you make the turn.

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