30 is RIGHT around the corner, Excited or NAH??

Have you ever read Joel 2:25? The LORD says, "I will give you back what you lost to the swarming locusts, the hopping locusts, the stripping locusts, and the cutting locusts. It was I who sent this great destroying army against you…"

I’m almost exactly one month from my 30^th birthday and like most people getting up there in age, from time to time, I’ve caught myself in that ugly comparison game, that awful “What I should have done by my 30th timeline”. I honestly LOVE where I am in my career but sometimes I do wonder, what if I figured out writing, productions, events and communications was one of my first loves years ago. I daydream often imagining where in the world I would have been right now. Sometimes we compare ourselves to friends; wow at 30 he owns a condo, she owns her own business, he’s building his own house, and she makes a six figure salary. This one is able to take a three week vacation in Dubai and they have a 4 and 2 year old. What the heck have I been doing with my 20’s again?

When the truth is there probably is a million amazing things you did in your 20’s but the pessimist in you is looking at the class half empty instead of half full. But if you indulged in this self pity for a minute and wondered honestly why don’t I have any of those things yet, you may say some of it is ignorance, or lack of focused planning and some of it may be due to the fact that you took a road down a path that would have saved you a whole lot of time if you had listened to that still voice of God speaking to you. I remember one of the first times I heard God telling me to go a certain direction. I fought and I fought him in my spirit. I remember it so vividly I was in church and the choir was singing the song “Say Yes” you know the one that goes... “You ought to say yes, say yes, tell the Lord yes”. I don’t know why I was fighting His voice so strongly that day, but let’s just say, “I didn’t tell the Lord yes”, in retrospect had I told the Lord yes I probably would have avoided a whole heap of drama that I brought into my life years later. See the things is, we all at one point choose a path that brings us much more heartache, trials and pain that we would have if we just had faith that God’s way was better. God’s way isn't always easier but trust me when I say its better.

So when you question the wrong path you took, that job you stayed on for 8 years and hated, that degree you have, that you never plan to use, the years you spent putting off going to school or that relationship that you now claim has “stolen” all of the best years of your 20’s. Is it all just lost? Will you now simply play a constant game of catch up to your peers? Well what I learned is, when God has a call on your life no matter how disobedient you are or how long you “wasted” doing something your way, God will do everything including sending a hail storm to get you back on track and if you think about it, none of your pain is ever really wasted, once you learn to use your pain and turn it into your purpose. God will use you and the time that you think you lost.

When Jonah tried to run away from God and do things his way, God sent a storm and had the men throw Jonah off the boat, placed him in the belly of a fish for three days and still sent him on to Nineveh. God got Jonah back on track and He will do the same for you. What’s so amazing is Joel 2:25 tells us, it’s God who sent the great army storming against you. Getting fired from your job wasn’t an accident, God knew you would never go off to school if they didn’t let you go, your parents house burning down isn’t God punishing you, He just knew you would have never moved on your own if it didn’t and finding out that that guy cheated on you didn’t happen because God wanted to break your heart, He just knew, had you never found out, you never would have had the strength to walk away and one day meet the person He had purposed for you.

God sends the storms to push us into the season where he’s called us to be. When we decide to follow Christ we expect our life to be a fairy tale but a lot times, it really isn’t and at times it still can be a nightmare. However it isn’t because He doesn’t love us, but God puts pressure on us to get us back to His path for our life, that same path that we spend so much time straying from.

So once you’ve made the decision to follow God, you often wonder, well I have chosen God and I’m going through a storm, but for how long? I’m now so far behind everyone else who seemed to have it all figured out years ago. However God wants us to remember that He will restore those years the locust have eaten.

This Valentine’s Day God gave me a gift that made this verse so clear. I went to my morning workout class and this Saturday we were training on the beach by The One and Only Ocean Club. Being new to Nassau there were several things and I did not remember at 5:50a.m. in the morning. The first thing was that no matter how sleepy, how early or how tired you are the minute you drive over that Paradise Island bridge you better have a dollar in your hand. Well shamefully I did not and the bridge tellers insisted that because of this I would not be allowed in. They started to direct everyone behind me to reverse, which by this time was about 6 cars. They told me when the cars reverse, that I would need to park my car on the side and walk through and see if I could find someone on the island to give me a dollar, REALLY!! PI tellers’ yall really doing a lot this morning, like no seriously this is A LOT!  Can you say embarrassed! Well after a while the security guard on the sidelines felt sorry for me and all the people who would have to reverse so I could get out, so he paid my toll.

It’s now about 6:10.a.m. And my class started 6.a.m. Once I was over the bridge I realized I really don’t know how to get to the beach from Ocean Club and the only words that kept playing in my head were the words from my trainer the day before when he said “Be sure not to go to the RIU beach entrance in the morning because that’s a mile down from where we are and you will have to walk that mile down the beach to Ocean Club to catch us up”. Well frustrated at it being 6:20.a.m. by now and the only entrance I could find is the one at RIU. I said the heck with it; I’ll enter here and just walk down. While I was walking on to the beach next to RIU I spotted some people working out, I said boy a lot people must use this beach to workout nah, when I took a better look I saw it was my workout group. PRAISE GOD! I had no idea how they got down there but I was just happy to see some familiar faces. I heard my trainer scream out “Kerel how did you know we were here?” They had run down to this end as a part of their workout routine. I said “I didn’t, I’m 20 minutes late and with the morning I had I just said forget it, I just need to get on the beach and I am so glad that even though I took the wrong path to get here, I still caught up with yall!”

Faithful is our God - Hezikiah Walker 

This story brought back out the optimist in me. Despite the morning I had, without even realizing it God re directed me right back to my group, despite all the wrong turns and the constant no’s, He had restored it all. So maybe like me you are about to turn 30, or 40 or maybe 50 and maybe you have made some wrong turns, but SO WHAT! You may not be where you thought you would be and you may be encountering some storms but those storms are what are pushing you to your destiny. As long as you are following God no matter how it looks you are right on schedule. The no’s, the times you get lost, are all a part of the journey to God re directing you to all the blessings He has designed for you. I’m actually now excited for the countdown to this new chapter in my life. If I am honest I have already seen the acceleration of whole lot things so far and I honestly can’t wait to see what else God has in store for me. God restores the years you lost, so stop worrying about timelines, wrong turns and the ugly game of comparison; because if you are wholeheartedly trusting and following Him believe me when I say He has you right where He wants you to be!