Polishing my Monuments

There’s a place in the Old Testament, not sure which scripture, that talks about memorializing and remembering the important events in your life.  The Hebrew people built altars and placed stones to commemorate significant places and events.  A sermon I heard once called it “polishing your monuments”.  The goal is to celebrate the victories God has won for you after the periods of testing and trial, learn from them, and always remember.  When you do life becomes richer; you experience personal growth and maturity, and life can be very satisfying.

Earlier this week I celebrated my 9^th anniversary at my company.  It has been a wild ride from the 5 of us in a borrowed conference room, an old desktop and monitor on loan from a co-worker, using the “sneaker-network” to print, and our first set of office supplies –a yellow legal pad and a few pens and highlighters – to the coast-to-coast company with over 100 employees that I now have the privilege of helping to manage.  What a blessing to be a part of such a fine organization, work with great people, and hold a position that suits my skill set and is so fulfilling.

I wasn’t always good at this monument-polishing thing.  Life was crazy in my early 20’s and I wouldn’t have recognized a monument moment if it bit me in the you-know-what.  But they were there.  I can see now how certain people were placed in my path in ways that could only be divine appointments.  How I came to work for my current boss is one; friends I made during that time that are still good friends today is another.  When I was a young married with toddlers, God placed me in a great church and I began to really study and learn about the Bible.  That foundational digging in the Word grounded me and kept my faith growing and strong during the years that followed when I was a single mom with two teenagers.  

Some of our struggles were the kind you wouldn’t wish on anyone, unsuitable for blogging.  Others were more common – financial, the challenge of a one-parent family, and a house that was literally crumbing around us while we fought with the insurance company.   But there were monuments in that period too.  My pilgrim Emmaus Walk; my daughter’s graduation from high school a year early and acceptance into an excellent university; my son’s unique journey through adolescence had so many monuments following periods of testing and trial it’s a story unto itself; my writings during that time became the core of my book.  And after 10 years of being a single mom God blessed me with a wonderful husband.  He took the mess of my life and used it to bless me; all I had to do was be willing to surrender my circumstances to God and He was more than able to take it from there.

Blessed indeed.   So many monuments to polish, so little time.  What a nice problem to have.