God Provides

"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"  -Jeremiah 29:11

In the Jeremiah passage God is speaking to His people whom He'd sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.  He told them to take wives, build houses, and plant gardens while they were there.  They were to pray on behalf of the cities they lived in.  Then He told them He had a plan to prosper and not harm them, "plans to give you hope and a future."

"Place" has always been important to me.  After my family started moving from one place to another after 4th grade Mamaw's place in southern Mississippi became my "place."  It was the one place that remained constant in my life.  The one place that felt like home to me.  By 1974, when this photo of her house was taken, she still had 20 of the 120 acres they'd farmed when I was a child.  I loved sitting on the front porch and hearing the cars coming along the gravel road from a distance.  The pine trees still made a lovely sound as the wind blew through the needles bringing back memories of playing in the woods.   This was my first visit back after I'd grown up and married five years before.  We'd bought our own townhouse by then and had been in it for a year.  I was loving decorating it to express who I was and to make it a home for the children we planned to have.  After eight years we were able to buy a larger single-family house on more than two acres--the gravel lane and pine trees behind the house had reminded me of Mamaw's place.  We raised our three sons here and are still here after 36 years.

Mamaw lived to be 103 and passed on in 2000.  Her house was stripped of its white pine interior walls, and I am told it is overgrown with brambles and probably fallen down by now.  But I have my home with my memories of raising our family here.  And our sons have their memories of growing up here, running in the woods through the pine trees and hearing the cars drive along the gravel road.  When my parents started moving every year God provided Mamaw's place as my "home" until He could provide me with my own place I could call home.

I am grateful that God has a plan for my life and that I can trust Him to give me what I need as I need it.