Paula Moldenhauer
Oppressed, Fruitful, and Celebrating!

The words leaped off the page and into my soul.

Seriously?

I hadn’t noticed them when I did the study. Beth Moore wasn’t talking about them from the video, but suddenly that’s where my attention focused and stayed: “But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread.”

Each week of the new Bible study I’d fought tears to make it there. The first week it was because getting there required driving, for the first time, past the site of my recent car accident–the one that totaled my daughter’s car the day before she was engaged. Returning to the site of the wreck left me trembling and crying.

The next week I just felt awful. It was the first night I’d slept without my prescription pain pills, and I hurt. Beyond that I could barely breath because from every side there were to do lists, and I didn’t feel like doing anything.

Oppressed described my feelings well. Beat up by two car wrecks in less than six month. Frustrated that just when I was about to be released from the doctor’s care, I had to start all over. Oppressed because it hurt to sit at the computer, and I had so much that needed to be done there.

Held back. Slowed down. Pushed under. Again.

But God’s word was clear. In the story in front of me, the more God’s people were oppressed, the more fruitful they became.

I’m thinking a lot about that today–about how my new website launched the same week God made those words leap into me.

Maybe I did feel oppressed, but the oppression couldn’t keep me under. Thanks to the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, the support of my family and friends, pain pills, and my fabulous web designer, there was FRUIT. May whatever God is doing through me multiply and spread.

So I’m smiling tonight. Rejoicing in fruitfulness in the midst of oppression. Loving the joy that is somehow embedded into my new website despite the struggle to get it finished in a difficult season.

Celebrating.

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