“I am not good enough to be a mother of more than one child” is transformed into, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15) — God sees no difference in value between the mother of none, the mother of one, or the mother of more than one, We all have the same value before God; Christ died for all of us, each of us just the same.

“God does not love me as much as He loves others” is transformed into “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1) — God is the same Shepherd to each of us; there is no partiality in how He treats us.

And most recently, “God owes me ___ because I’ve been doing ___” is transformed into “Then Job replied to the Lord… You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42: 1, 3) — God, being God, operates in ways that I, being human, will not ever fully understand. As hard as that is to accept sometimes, I need to be more careful in how I view God and what He does, and also how I (sometimes unwittingly) interpret events in my life.

Of course, this thought might lead to “There’s no point in hoping for anything I want because God will do as He will” but I realize that the Bible is full of the promises of God, and they are good promises. “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23).

These snippets quite sum up my whole year. I didn’t realize the many misconceptions I had about God. Indeed, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of God. But this year and every event has served to correct my understanding, and I look forward to learning more about God in the coming year.