What gets you excited about getting up in the morning?
Why?
When did you start caring about the things you care about each day?
Who do you most often share life with?
Is there a pattern in the answers above? Or are you more in a season of spontaneity?
I often wonder about my life... the changes that have taken place, the things that will happen in the future, how to best prepare and be ready with the decisions I make day to day. Sometimes that means sleeping a lot, preparing, practicing, and more rest at home again for the busyness of what is ahead... and other times that means cramming in loads of calendar time, back to back, for all the many people and things that I am in love with, obligated to, excited for and passionate about!
Yesterday was more of a rest day for me and my kiddos, they were just not feeling 100%... and the down time has got me thinking about a lot of different things... travelling, celebrating, inviting, gathering friends and family, starting new habits, continuing in things I have put on hold, challenging my kids and playing with them more, date nights, holidays, wintertime, moving, worship times, praying purposefully and more often, living smaller, more intentionally, really slowing down more and listening...
Life used to feel fairly black and white to me as a young girl and even as a young adult, but as I grow older with each year I feel this soft stirring that life is so much bigger and more colorful than I have ever believed it to be!
A verse comes to mind, and really, if you would just google search this whole chapter in Ephesians 3 that would be amazing:
"Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."
Ephesians 3:20-21... What a prayer! Trusting God's Powerful working above what we can even ask or imagine! Do you? I sure want too! From generation to generation and forever... can we even comprehend what this really means? The weight of eternity makes me want to really slow down in this next season...
While it may seem that I share a lot of my life out in the open for all to see, the truth is I have spent a lot of my life in the quiet, in the lonely, in the unseen day to day of living at home and serving at home as well as in the church building setting. The older I get the more I realize that this is not as normal as I have thought, this is unique and special and I pray deeply that I can submit this quiet, wondering, peacefulness (for the most part (; ) to be used by the Lord in Mighty ways for His Glory!
Please correct me if I am wrong, but American life is so often characterized by the spotlight media and the status quo of checks and balances- spent under contract from one person to the next, committed time, ordered days, pointing out the normal and the special, labels, shows, ideas, all sold for a price... these things can be good or evil but for love... and yet, who can find love in a system that boasts of self alone and glorifying our own namesakes, rather than acknowledging the One who made us?
What is Love? Intimacy? Friendship? Loyalty? When the next newest thing is always coming out? What do we do with the old? Do we cherish our history or toss it away, outdated, unneeded?
How much do we leave up to faith in God anyway?
My life has been such a gift of privacy, thoughtfulness, slowness, provision, grace, conversation, stillness and hope...
Even now, I don't always know what to make of this reality that I do not have to strive to be loved though, even with the sweetest of families and home lives, why is this truth so hard to comprehend?
I am loved by grace through faith... oh to hold tight, speak this truth openly, and live like I have learned it by heart already... even though my heart is so forgetful!
How do we take all that we have learned with us and share it wholeheartedly, lovingly, softly with others?
Grace, grace, grace... an eternity of grace!
Can we even grasp this reality? Amidst all our questions, understandings, experiences... it's all grace!
What a blessed truth to lay my head into tonight!
I hope my silly ramblings will inspire you to slow down and lay out your thoughts and questions too!
Jesus makes this possible, to ramble, to wonder, and to find Hope again... thank you GOD! Your grace is sufficient in my weakness...
Amen.
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