With God All Things are Possible

This story has been weighing on my heart and I feel that I need to share it....

I was recently watching a show called "Locked Up Abroad" on the National Geographic channel. It was about Martin and Gracia Burnham, Philippine missionaries and parents to three children. The story is incredible and inspiring and heartbreaking. I found myself holding my breath and trying not to cry as the wife, Gracia, told her story of being taken hostage with her husband, while on vacation. They were held hostage by the Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim terrorist group, for over a year. Unimaginable. As I watched the story on t.v., I was inspired~

Gracia described her incredible experience....the terror, the strength of her relationship with God and her husband to pull her through, the hunger, the desperation, the waiting, the death. I couldn't even begin to imagine what she went through. But my heart was touched as she spoke of her feelings while she was captive. She compared herself to her captors, because she had the sin of jealousy and hatred towards them. "How am I better then they when I have this hatred in my heart." And I kept thinking, "How could you not?!?!?" She looked beyond herself and saw a people who needed the Lord and ministered to them throughout the time that she and her husband were there. As her story continued, my heart ached...for the person that she was, and the person that I was not....Her husband died the day that she was rescued. A year and 11 days after they were taken captive.

At the end of her story, she wonders if she has become the person that God wants her to be from this experience. She HOPES that she is exactly what God wanted her to be, how incredible after all that she has been through. And I find myself hoping the same thing but knowing that there is more that I can do to be all that I can be in the Lord. I know that there is something in me that can be used to inspire but I also know that I am scared. My hope is the same as Gracia's~ I want to be all that I am called to be. I will be honest in saying that I know that there is more that I can do. I realize that I need to go beyond myself and my comfort zone. I hope that you will read her book and get inspired, In the Presence of My Enemies, Gracia Burnham

Her story reminds me of Ally's memory verse...."With God, all things are possible." Matthew 19:26 And how sweet to hear her sweet voice say these words....With GOD all things are possible. I pray that the lives of my girls, my husband and myself would be full of all things possible, because of God's will in our lives!