Is it worth it?

 In Thee do I put my trust. Psalm 7:1

The weekend of the 1st,  I got a treat.

Thanks to my sil, I was able to get out of the house and go to the Utah Shakespeare Festival.  We try to go every year.  I grew up in San Diego with the Old Globe Theater, and I thought when I moved to the desert that was all over.

But, surprisingly, we discovered that within a 3 hour drive, there was Shakespeare!

To get there, my sil drove both ways.  Usually we stay overnight there, but since the plays we wanted to see were 48 hours apart, we decided to drive home and then back again.

Bad move.

I didn't think twice about it - not realizing that that meant 16 straight hours from here to the play and back again, getting home about 130 am.

I was exhausted.

And 48 hours later I got to do it again!

By the end of the second marathon day I felt like a puddle on the floor with my eyes sticking out.  The next morning when I awakened, I was so dizzy I couldn't stand up.  I was severely nauseated and every muscle screamed. It was scary.  I haven't had a rebound that severe in a long time. I had to call my sil for help it was so bad.

Praise God, it only took less than 24 hours in bed - in fact, by that evening I could get up by myself and the anti-nausea drugs were working well.

And I started to think about what certain things are worth.

Had I known what the aftermath would be, what would I have chosen?  Well...I would have gone anyway.  The productions at USU are top notch - and Merry Wives of Windsor is a favorite play - with front row seats yet!  The theater is built to the specs of Shakespeare's theater in England, the acoustics wonderful, the open-air setting perfect for an end-of-summer night - in the low 80's, the feel of dew in the air, the fresh scent of new-mown grass, a million stars overhead, and a sweet, gentle zephyr of a breeze that wandered in and out of the theater.  Plus, a surprise show-stealing actor that made Falstaff, the usual buffoon of the comedy, pale in comparison.  It was a perfect Shakespearean evening.

Yes, I would have chosen to go.

As I look back over the 3+ decades of walking with my King, I see the difficulties and the setbacks, the pain and sorrow, the bleak days that seemed endless with some unknown disease stalking me, the loss of a profession I loved.

Had I known, would I have chosen Him?

My heart answers with an unequivocal, resounding YES!

The "Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble..." (couldn't resist quoting Shakespeare!) of this life are nothing compared to the joy and comfort of His presence, the sure knowing that the One Who has chosen me to be His can be trusted, that the lessons woven into the pain are worth deciphering, that His presence in my life turned it from black and white into Living Color.

And the interesting thing, to me, is that when I look back over the years, it wasn't all that hard, really.  He made even the things I considered unbearable bearable.  When my heart had been rendered what I considered a fatal blow, He picked up the pieces and put me back together - the hole, to be sure, is still there, but it is no longer a jagged-edged crater.  The edges have healed into smoothness, the shrunken hole a testament to His faithfulness, the pang of remembrance no longer a twisting knife. He has taught me not to be afraid of the darkness, for He will always light a candle in that darkness to lead me Home.

Always.

He is worth more than anything this world can throw at me.

And that is why I can say with no reservation : "In Thee do I put my trust."