THE REST OF THE STORY By Lori A Alicea

God has written your story.

Wall to wall in Heaven’s library are love letters Our Almighty Father has authored, gushed over in intimate thought and detail in a personally bound book for each of us titled,
“My Story for You”.

From the beginning of time, God knew you.
Not of you.
God knew you by name.

With great excitement;
Before you were formed in the womb,
Before you were ever born,
He ordered your steps;
He planned for your life.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
Before you were born I set you apart…”
Jeremiah 1:5       

In His own handwriting, God has captured the mysteries, the surprises, the ups, the downs, the great beginnings and sad chapters of your life, redeeming every tear that pours from your eyes into the great hope He will be glorified in the pages and Kingdom history making bestseller of,
“My Story for You”.

As with us all though, we’re in a hurry.
Living life in the drive-through lane.
Microwaving moments.
Speeding through memories.

Missing the sweet breadcrumbs in the seconds God has dropped for us along the back roads of the scenic route.

With clocks always ticking, we leave reading for the bookworm, the nerd wearing the pocket protector and one who doesn’t go anywhere without his library card.

Back in the day you learned to “speed-read” the meat of a book forgoing the surprises and delights of the sides, the buttered bread, and delectable dessert.

Having the ability to carry a library in our back pocket with the technologies of today, volumes can be consumed in an afternoon. Preferring to let our fingers swipe and fast forward through an electronic book, we sadly miss the writer’s heartbeat, his love and sweat poured onto the pages, thoughts of us written in the words and in the sentences.

God has written our story.

Page after page and chapter after chapter, written between the lines of our birthdays, graduations, weddings, jobs and relationships, we can trust the author in the question marks, the cliffhangers, the unanswered questions, the whys and why-nots.

Because remember,
He’s ordered our steps,
He’s planned out our life,
He knows us from cover to The End.

God has written our story.
Sometimes though if we find ourselves stuck in a failing marriage, the stress of a job, the mountain of bills, the financial drought, the pain of a wayward child, the dead-end relationships, we might give up and give in or escape to something better, losing faith in the author altogether because we couldn’t handle life in this Chapter of Despair.

When the book of our life reads nothing but difficulty,
God begs us to keep turning the pages.
God urges us to find strength in the sentences.

God reminds us to remember his faithfulness in the former chapters for hope in our future chapters yet to come.

God reminds us our best days and his most amazing plans remain ahead of us
If we keep reading,
The Rest of the Story.

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God
has prepared for those who love Him.”
1 Corinthians 2:9 NLT

As a parent myself, I can’t imagine God’s heartbreak when the one whose love story he authored stops reading the pages he wrote especially for them.

As a parent, I can’t even touch the grief of our Heavenly Father who weeps for the one who becomes lost and astray in their pain, paralyzed to turn the page and find relief in God’s love in
The Rest of the Story.

The pain is still fresh.
The “Whys” will overwhelm.
The questions will remain unanswered.

If only she had kept reading,
She would have found her hope in
The Rest of the Story.

God weeps behind the closed doors of heaven for the one who needed someone to turn the pages of hopelessness for them, to read to them when they were unable to read for themselves the blurred lines of
The Rest of the Story.

There is a great hope in
The Rest of the Story.

We don’t have to give up.
We don’t have to give in.
There is no need to escape.

The hope of our tomorrow is trusting in the author of our today,
No matter how painful today is.

Sadly, just a few years ago,
Our great niece Ashley stopped reading her story.
Ashley gave up hope for tomorrow because of her deep pain of today.

There was a great hope for our niece in
The Rest of her Story.

Yet sadly and tragically, our twelve year-old Ashley ended her life, unable to escape the pages and chapters of her despair.
If only Ashley kept turning the pages.
If only Ashley could have trusted her pain into the hands of the one who authored her life.

If only Ashley could have believed in the pages written for her tomorrows.  That her tomorrows had joy waiting for her.

…weeping may endure for a night,
but joy cometh in the morning.
Psalm 30:5 KJV

The wedding dress she was meant to wear will remain on the rack.
The children she was meant to carry will never cry or call her mama.
Ashley’s grandchildren will never find sweet dreams, asleep in her arms.

All the years in between of Ashley’s life will remain a mystery,

Because her book was closed way too soon.
The Rest of Her Story will never be known, will never be read.

The last page of her story was never read by her,
But heartbreakingly and painstakingly though, was read by us,

The End.